Greens overtake Labour in wake of by-election - "The pollster, which sampled around 2,000 adults on March 1 and 2, said it had never recorded a lower score for Labour in its 26-year history."
The Greens are finally coming under serious scrutiny – and they’re rattled - "they’re starting to come under some actual scrutiny. And they clearly don’t like it one little bit. Look how they reacted after Mothin Ali, the Green Party’s deputy leader, was criticised in the Commons on Monday for attending a protest against the air strikes on Iran. Sir Alec Shelbrooke, a Tory MP, accused Ali of “protesting in support of the Ayatollah”. In reply, Sir Keir Starmer said, “I think we’re all shocked by the actions of the deputy leader of the Green Party.” Pretty mild stuff by the usual standards of Commons debate. Yet it seems to have sent the Greens into a shrieking meltdown. Zack Polanski, their leader, howled that Sir Keir was guilty of “blatant Islamophobia”, by “smearing a caring man of principle for standing up for peace”. Meanwhile, Ali wailed that he was a victim of a “defamatory lie” and “pure racism”. Funny how things turn out. Polanski has spent almost his entire leadership smugly proclaiming that any politician or pundit who dares criticise the Greens is “rattled”. Yet all of a sudden, he’s sounding distinctly rattled himself. All I can say is that he’d better get used to it. Because, for the first time, people are beginning to take the Greens seriously. And for Polanski’s party, that’s bad news. After all, let’s face it – one of the main reasons for their recent success is that many of their own voters don’t actually know what their policies are. We demonstrated this at the weekend, when Telegraph reporters visited the scene of the Gorton and Denton by-election and asked Green voters whether they knew that, for example, the party wants to legalise crack cocaine and prostitution. Local Muslims, in particular, were aghast. “It seems they hid those policies,” lamented one. “Who supports these policies?” gasped another. Both said they would never have voted Green if they’d known. Well, lots more people will soon know about those policies, too, because the Green Party’s opponents will be making sure everyone does. No voter will be able to avoid hearing that the Greens want to give primary school children lessons in how to take drugs “safely”, make the UK pay billions of pounds in reparations for the 18th-century slave trade, and allow absolutely all illegal immigrants to remain in Britain (while giving them a house each, and handing them free money “at the level of Universal Basic Income”, with no obligation to work for it). As a result, the next general election should be somewhat unusual. Normally, political parties spend the campaign telling the electorate about their own policies. But this time, they’ll all be telling the electorate about Green Party policies – purely to ensure that the nation finally grasps just how screamingly bonkers they are. I used to think of the Greens as the party that puts the “mental” into “environmentalism”. But of late, they seem to have gone oddly quiet on the environment – and started putting the “mental” into everything else, instead... Still, Polanski can cling to one small hope. Most of his party’s policies are so preposterous that voters may assume that their opponents have simply made them up."
If you criticise Muslims, that's Islamophobia
British strikes on targets in Iran would be lawful, says deputy prime minister - "Cyprus has vocally criticised the UK over its lack of alacrity in sending defensive assets to protect the island. On Friday Lammy wrongly claimed to the BBC that “Cyprus is a Nato ally”. It is one of four EU nations that are not part of the 32-state alliance. Lammy also mistakenly referred to a Typhoon jet as a “tycoon”. A Number 10 spokesperson said the prime minister retained confidence in him."
Damn racists criticising a black man!
Lammy accused of forcing through plans to scrap jury trials - "David Lammy has been accused of railroading plans to scrap jury trials through Parliament. MPs on the Commons justice committee said the Justice Secretary had failed to seek a “broader consensus” for the proposals before introducing a bill that enacts them in Parliament. Failing to consult on the Courts and Tribunals Bill “inhibited” scrutiny of the plans, which represent the biggest change to criminal courts in more than 50 years, the MPs said. The cross-party committee also warned that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) was placing “unrealistic” demands on magistrates who would have to hear tens of thousands more criminal cases under the plans... The committee also expressed concern that defendants with previous convictions will be more likely to get a jury trial than those with a clean record if the court reforms go ahead. The disparity would be an “unintended consequence” of the new trial allocation process, which will factor in the length of sentence someone would probably get when deciding whether their case should be held before a jury, the committee said... The Criminal Law Solicitors’ Association told the committee that the “differential impact” on defendants would amount to “a penalty for being of good character”."
The Free Speech Union on X - "Senior figures at Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, under the command of Andy Burnham, have cautioned firefighters who support Reform UK over their political views. In a further chilling assault on free speech, staff have also effectively been urged in an email to report colleagues who support Reform. Fire brigade bosses have also said they are seeking legal advice on what to do about firefighters who decide to stand as Reform UK candidates. This is despite the fact that, unlike police officers, there is no legal bar preventing firefighters from participating in national or local politics. In their email, fire brigade bosses Mr Petch and Ms Ahmed said: ’We are aware that some staff members have chosen to represent Reform UK in their local areas. We know this may cause concern within our network and wider. ’The individuals involved have been spoken to, to make it clear that as members of GMFRS (Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service) our core values and professional behaviours must be displayed at all times. ’The service is currently seeking formal legal guidance… to ensure we are protected from all perspectives and that our inclusive culture remains safe. ‘Our priority is and always will be ensuring that every member of this network feels supported, respected and safe at work.’ They also confirmed that they would be consulting the Fire Brigades Union on the matter. In his role as Mayor of Greater Manchester, @AndyBurnhamGM — who is also tipped by some to be a future Prime Minister if he wins the Makerfield by-election — is also Greater Manchester’s Fire Commissioner, responsible for overseeing the service. General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, Lord Young of Acton, has now written to Mr Burnham to raise concerns about the chilling effect this has on free speech. Lord Young said that the ‘clear implication’ of the email from the fire brigade bosses was that ‘representing Reform UK constitutes an inherent threat to the institution’s culture and values and is to be treated as morally suspect’. He also highlighted that no action appears to have been taken against firefighters who support other political parties. The letter also states: ‘Staff are further invited to report colleagues who support any groups that go against the service’s values, which effectively amounts to an instruction to inform on colleagues for their political beliefs. ’The email will create a chilling effect on the free speech of GMFRS employees who support Reform. ’The practical effect is that a public fire and rescue service governed by you is treating the lawful political activity of your electoral opponents as a reputational risk to their employer. ‘Regardless of whether this reflects your instruction, it reflects your governance; and a public office-holder who permits his institution to demonise or chill the speech and political activity of those who support his principal electoral rival cannot claim to be discharging that office with the impartiality it demands.’"
Stuey Beef 🇬🇧🏴 on X - "If Vladimir Putin changed the voting system days before an election to stop his opponents winning, every British journalist would call it what it is: rigging the rules. Tonight, Labour rammed through a last‑minute switch in the Lords so that if Andy Burnham wins Makerfield and quits as Greater Manchester Mayor, his replacement won’t be chosen on a simple first‑past‑the‑post ballot, but on the supplementary vote system instead. Why now? Because Labour knows the race to replace Burnham would be a straight two‑horse fight with Reform UK – and under FPTP, the candidate with the most votes wins, no second chances, no back‑room redistributions, no “stop Reform” stitch‑ups. Under SV, Labour gets a second bite of the cherry: if their candidate can limp into the top two, they can hoover up second preferences from every other party and magic a “majority” on the second count, even if Reform tops the poll on first preferences. This isn’t “modernising democracy”. It’s the governing party using its Commons majority and the unelected Lords to hurriedly doctor the rules of one specific contest because it’s terrified the voters might choose someone else. When the establishment preached to the world about “rules‑based order”, they forgot to mention one thing: in Britain, the rules are “based” on whether Labour thinks it might lose."
Stop ignoring the Islamisation of our democracy | Robert Clark | The Critic Magazine - "In addition to rising anti-Semitic violence, two other areas must be urgently addressed if the next Government is to combat rising radical Islam: family-based voting — a threat to British democracy and freedom of speech — and the Government’s tacit support for polygamy in the form of increased welfare payments. This latter problem is liable to essentially endorse people trafficking through forced marriages. The recent Gorton and Denton by-election was an inflection point. Independent election observers Democracy Volunteers raised concerns in Gorton and Denton, reporting instances of family voting across multiple polling stations. In 2022, the group reported up to 5% of voters engaging in family voting, 85% of whom were women from Asian families. Reform UK reported their observations in Gorton and Denton to Greater Manchester Police; in 2022 the previous Conservative government made some attempt to combat the practice, including pushing the Electoral Commission to prioritise the issue of family voting. Labour has now vowed to scrap these measures. Sir James Cleverly, the shadow communities secretary, has said: “Off the back of a by-election marked by allegations of breaches of electoral law, this Labour Government is now going soft on electoral fraud as part of a wider lurch to the sectarian Left”. The next government must ensure that toughened Electoral Commission guidance is enforced, support independent observers like Democracy Volunteers to increase fair election monitoring, spread awareness and education in wards with high Muslim demographic, improve polling station and voter booth infrastructure to afford voters greater levels of privacy and introduce much tougher sentencing for offenders, with special tribunals and very public naming and shaming. Fundamentally the Electoral Commission must get serious targeting Islamic dominated wards and districts for heavy observation, rather than the government relying on misguided blanket national policies such as national ID. Separately, it was recently revealed that the Department for Work and Pensions has since April 2026 increased the benefits paid out to households in polygamous marriages. Whilst illegal under British law, polygamous marriages are common amongst any African and Asian cultures, and under sharia law. Monogamy is one of the Judeo-Christian world’s great advantages, and created a family structure that has been a massive developmental advantage for western societies. This is now being eroded, not simply from imported Islamic tradition, but by the British Government itself. Under a Central Tribunal system to handle the deportations of illegal migrants, failed asylum seekers, and foreign criminals from Britain, there must also be a special tribunal established for individuals engaged in polygamous marriages. Whilst there are estimates of up to 20,000 polygamous marriages, this goes to a much deeper concern; a 2024 poll discovered that up to 32% of all British Muslims were in favour of sharia law. This level of support by British Muslims for sharia law – let alone by its foreign agents on UK soil – is one of the root causes for much of the sectarian strife we are witnessing unfold on our streets. The next government must go further than any before it and ban sharia courts which operate across British towns and cities, with stringent penalties, whilst also naming and shaming Islamist charities which support these courts and their ideologies... Much of this — especially deportations — is only possible once Britain leaves the ECHR. Both the Conservatives and Reform UK have already committed to this long-overdue action. Without this sense of urgency, and preparation, expect the march of Islamisation to roll on."
David Lammy defends tweet about growing up on 'tax credits' - "London mayoral candidate David Lammy has defended a tweet in which he claimed his mother had relied on tax credits to bring him up – despite him having been aged 31 when the benefit was introduced... Lammy was born in 1972, but child and working tax credits were introduced by the Labour government in 2003, when the MP was in his 30s."
Green council destroys thousands of flowers planted by volunteers - "Volunteers have been left “beyond angry” after flower bulbs they planted were mown over by a Green Party-led council. More than 70 volunteers planted almost 30,000 bulbs in St George Park in Bristol on Saturday after raising thousands of pounds to fund the initiative. But thousands of the bulbs were “shredded” days later when council workers mowed the grass in the park."
James Heale on X - "Starmer didn’t fall in the battle for any great cause or principle. He didn’t have a foreign policy crusade (Suez) or major reform (poll tax), a strategic gamble (referendum) or economic package (mini Budget). His support just seemed to ebb away in pointless, petty matters."
Mike Jones on X - "Starmer made two genuinely big calls in office. The first was scrapping the Rwanda plan on day one, despite it being paid for, legislated for, and ready to go. He replaced it with the nebulous promise to “smash the gangs”. That decision blew a hole in his entire approach to illegal migration. The second was his mobilisation of state power during the Southport riots. A muscular response was necessary, but Starmer crossed a red line. In doing so, he exposed the two-tier nature of the British state. Those were the two defining decisions of his premiership. Both were deliberate choices. And both ultimately helped undo his premiership."
Threads - "The truth about the Keir Starmer resignation: He was hounded out of office. A concerted effort from the mainstream media to trash him began almost immediately. Then, as Trump destroyed the international rules based order, and forged a new era of domestic and international corruption, Social Media bosses fell in line. Musk, Zuckerberg and others allowed disinformation and AI generated lies to proliferate unchecked. Bots flourished, and foreign actors took advantage. This cannot go on!"
Jack Dart | Facebook - "Legislation must be passed to tackle this. Social media companies must be forced to take action. They want to push responsibility onto others. That is not acceptable."
Left wingers hate free speech so much and want to control everything
Sam on X - "The first major wave of online misinformation resulted in Brexit, a decision that the majority of economists regard as the most damaging economic choice Britain has made in modern times, making millions of working families poorer. Now it appears a second wave may succeed in forcing out a democratically elected Prime Minister who in a short timeframe has a track record of delivering policy designed to help millions of working families. Not a perfect man, but certainly one of the better PMs of the last 30 years or so. A wave of gross & obvious misinformation, spread and amplified by foreign-owned social media platforms, in a deliberate campaign designed to indoctrinate UK citizens, may have toppled a British Prime Minister. We are going down a very dark path here."
Peter Hague on X - "You cannot just brand all disagreement as misinformation and expect to be taken seriously. This bunker mentality among metropolitan elites is a large part of why governments keep failing one after another. Consider, just for a nanosecond, that you and your mates might be wrong."
Peter Hague on X - "While we are doing our autopsies of Keir Starmer’s unimpressive premiership, I’d like to suggest he is a prime example of a certain personality type that causes us problems. He has been a high achiever his whole life. From the 11+ onwards he passed tests and ascended every hierarchy he found himself in. This, I believe, shaped his worldview in a way that made him absolutely unsuited for the office. For Starmer, you accept the rules of the system, you play the game, and when you win you get rewards. Number 10 was just the last objective that he earned by mechanically playing society like a video game - it was his by right for ticking all the boxes correctly. His visible confusion and inability to grasp the job of actual leadership is, I think, a result of never having had to deal with the world beyond whichever social game he was playing at the time. Law is such a bounded game where a rigid, goal oriented thinker like Starmer can and did thrive. A better leader would be someone who has some experience doing something which contacts base reality, where outcomes are not socially determined. Business, STEM, the military etc all fall into this category. Those people who spend their careers in the purely social feedback loops of law and politics do I think make poor leaders even if they excel at the process that gets them to the leadership."
AB on X - "I think this is partly right but omits the impact of his particular choice of legal career. His Doughty Street private practice was built on deep distrust and challenge to the exercise of power and authority by state and business with human rights as the highest norm. I think that is a damaging world view for someone who goes on to wield the power and authority himself. That was seen with him as DPP in stuff like the Twitter Joke Trial where he, having identified himself so strongly with being on the side of right, was unable to get off those rails to challenge himself as the holder of power and authority. Same again on Chagos and probably assisted dying. Had he been a lawyer whose career had been about working within the system and believing it to be a good one or at least a morally neutral one, he would have been better at the actual persuasion and good faith negotiation needed both in law and politics. But the combination of complete moral certainty, opposition to the existing structure of society, and procedural exactitude proved bad for the more ambiguous real world."
Peter Hague on X - "He was still working In a hierarchy, just a parallel one. And one that still ultimately was part of the greater hierarchy of the law"
AB on X - "True but the way that human rights driven practice, particularly in its earliest days, worked was by subverting the system and exploiting the features of its hierarchy. Running that angle on everything turned cases into intellectual games divorced from the substantive “did X commit Y crime”/“should Z be deported?” to focus on whether regardless of the substance there was a breach of rights to trump it. So the likes of Starmer and Hermer became adept at arguing those drily to judges, separate from the substantive case, rather than persuading juries of innocence. But because the hierarchy and system rewards winning and in particular winning in novel appellate cases, it drove them rapidly upwards."
Helen Dale (not on your team, but always fair) on X - "Lawyers can be able politicians—Australia’s longest-serving & second-longest serving PMs (Menzies & Howard) were a barrister & solicitor respectively. Both were outstanding in the top job. However, when lawyers in high office fail, they fail in a particular way—they mistake process for outcome. That is at the root of Starmer’s failure."
AB on X - "Absolutely. Both Thatcher and Blair here also were barristers and similarly outstanding PMs and politicians. Though I think maybe being middling enough barristers to switch early career rather than outstanding ones may have helped. It gave them and honed all the valuable professional skills but also an awareness of their limits and the limits of process and law which only politics can address. So they were interested in and understood how to get things done by law and process but knew that it was a politician’s job to decide what things should be done and to persuade people of this. Many people don’t get this. Even in my mundane legal career I spend a lot of time telling clients who want me to decide what to do that while I can, it’s their job, mine is to help them achieve the thing they want to do. If they want me to decide that then they’ve got no role at all. And if I wanted to do that I’d go and become the Sales Director or CEO myself."
Helen Dale (not on your team, but always fair) on X - "I have given similar advice at least hundreds of times in my life. “Lawyers act under instruction,” repeated over & over."
Heskel Balas 🚁 on X - "This is correct. Lawyers don't have the right mental models to be in charge - they approach problems through regulation and paperwork, which is why we have so many in the west. For some reason lawyers have become a dominant force in government instead of builders and doers"
All of our submarines are missing - "None of the Royal Navy’s attack submarines are currently at sea. A fleet of nuclear-powered hunter-killers all tied up alongside or in dock, every one of them, is a serious matter. This is not the first time it’s happened and last time it did, the Ministry of Defence trotted out the tired mantra “we continue to meet all our operational tasks”. We do not."
Chaotic Green Party tearing itself apart over internal complaints - "Since Zack Polanski became leader last year, the Green Party has been consumed by factionalism, infighting and accusations of anti-Semitism. Now the party’s own disciplinary committee is tearing itself apart as it tries to deal with a mounting backlog of complaints... Between July 1, 2025, and June 10, 2026, the party received 116 disciplinary cases, representing a “significant and sustained increase” in complaints. Of those, just 18 have concluded, while seven have been paused and 74 are still active, according to the report. Just six disciplinary hearings took place between July and November last year. Then, for the next six months, from December 2025 to May this year, no full hearings took place. In May, the chairman of the committee resigned. Currently, the committee has only managed to fill 15 out of 22 seats, stalling progress. Reacting to the report and news that the party had made almost no progress resolving complaints, one Jewish Green Party member, who wishes to remain anonymous because of fears of a backlash, told The Telegraph: “To hear there has been little to no progress with complaints is deeply concerning. “I am aware of Jewish members who are submitting complaints about members, and there is real concern that if these complaints are delayed then these people will continue to be a threat to Jewish members.”"
Council staff in Norfolk invited to ‘safe space’ session to air fears about Reform UK - "Staff at a Reform-led council were invited to a “safe space” session to vent about the party’s newly formed administration. Unison, Britain’s largest trade union, urged Norfolk county council employees feeling “vulnerable and targeted” to attend the two-hour drop-in session last Wednesday. But the event was criticised by several of Reform UK’s 40 newly elected councillors in the county – with one describing it as a “snowflake session”... Scott Hussey, a Reform councillor, said: “We value the professionalism and welfare of council employees and if any employee has a genuine concern about their welfare or working environment, they should raise it through the appropriate channels. “But here we have a Labour-affiliated union – operating at a council with just one Labour councillor – organising needless snowflake sessions. “Even Unison’s own members don’t share their leadership’s ideology. Recent polling found trade union members now back Reform UK and Labour equally, with six in 10 believing Labour has lost touch with working people.”"
UK puts Chagos Islands deal on hold to avoid ‘toxic backlash’ : r/unitedkingdom - "You mean giving away territory and paying for it is an unpopular policy? Colour me surprised..."
