Links - 23rd September 2026 (2 - 'Indigenous' Peoples: Canada)

Assembly of Treaty Chiefs call for premier, UCP treason investigation
They know the gravy train will stop if Alberta becomes independent
Left wingers hate freedom movements and equal rights if they hurt the left wing agenda
Complaining about foreign interference is rich given the amount of US funding of ecological and indigenous groups in Canada to keep it poor/i>

Meme Jonathan Kay: "Love how the esteemed "judges" appear with a wall of shoes, symbolizing those 215 "unmarked graves" in Kamloops they haven't quite gotten around to finding. Looks very professional and impartial"
"A panel of seven judges will hear evidence on behalf of the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal this week at the daphne art centre in Montreal."

Artur Wilczynski on X - "Canada has work to do to address the ongoing systemic racism and challenges faced by Indigenous Peoples in this country. I do not agree that those challenges constitute a “continuing genocide”. Words have specific meaning."

Don't take verdict of 'continuing genocide' on Indigenous seriously | National Post - "at the Daphne art centre in Montreal, the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) declared Canada guilty not only of genocide but “continuing genocide,” citing residential schools, alleged mass graves and current government policies.  Many Canadian media outlets reported the story uncritically, treating the non-binding ruling as major news and describing the panel as being composed of “international human rights experts” — despite the fact that it consisted of only seven panellists, including a psychologist, a documentary filmmaker and an Indigenous rights activist. The coverage omitted the fact that five years after it was announced that graves had been found, no excavations have begun at any residential schools, despite millions earmarked for the work, proving that some outlets readily accept and publish the words of activist groups as unquestioned truth without providing balanced information to the public. The PPT was founded in Italy in 1979 and is actually an NGO that describes itself as an “international opinion tribunal.” On its website, it describes its 57 sessions so far as “ensuring the participation of peoples and social movements and creating a working agenda for human and peoples’ rights at the global level.” It does not have any type of governmental, United Nations or judicial mandate. Therefore, any ruling from it is purely symbolic and non-binding.  Nevertheless, the Canadian Press’s story — which was picked up by CTV, CP24, the Toronto Star and CityNews, among others — described the tribunal variously as an “international panel of human rights experts” and a “panel of seven judges” that was “mandated to look at missing and disappeared children and unmarked graves at Canada’s residential school sites.”  In reality, the seven-members of the PPT’s panel for the session in Montreal, which laid this very serious claim at the feet of our country after just a week of hearings, are best described as activists rather than impartial, high-level human rights jurists, judging from their bios published on the panel’s website. Some of them, like Carlos Castresana, have law degrees and have been involved in various United Nations bodies. Others have credentials but are clearly not neutral arbiters. For example, Valmaine Toki, a Maori woman from New Zealand, is an Indigenous rights scholar, lawyer and Indigenous rights advocate.  Andrew Woolford, a professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Manitoba, is a researcher who focuses on genocide. His upcoming book, “Genocide in Canada: A Critical Approach,” is described as an exploration of “settler colonial genocide in Canada, overcoming the limitations of the traditional genocide concept and its legal formulation and demonstrating that settler colonialism threatens the existence of Indigenous peoples.” Woolford is not a judge. Nor is he a neutral academic. And judging by his book, he had already come to a conclusion about whether Canada is guilty of committing genocide before arriving in Montreal.  Others on the panel don’t have any legal experience at all. Carlos Beristain is described as a researcher with a PhD in psychology who investigates human rights violations in Latin America and has served as an “expert witness for medical and psychosocial evaluation” for human rights victims.  Ellen Gabriel, a Mohawk activist from Quebec, has a bachelor of fine arts degree from Concordia University. She has no legal training and is in no way qualified to rule on genocide. Seánna Howard has been working as an associate clinical professor, teaching international human rights and Indigenous peoples, and the international human rights advocacy workshop at the University of Arizona for almost 21 years.  Howard has never served as a judge, and her department’s website outlines clearly how her work revolves around Indigenous activism. It’s hard to see how she would be able to make a neutral assessment of Canada’s “continuing genocide.”  Despite the lack of qualifications of the panel members and their activist backgrounds, several news outlets suggested through headlines, and by virtue of simply parroting the ruling, that they were qualified and impartial enough to make a judgment on whether Canada committed, and is still committing, genocide — a very serious crime in international law.  All the panellists are, of course, entitled to their opinions, but the Canadian Press portrayed what went on as a “trial,” and their opinion as a “judgment” handed down by “judges,” making it sound like some sort of official proceeding, which it most certainly was not.  The Canadian Press story also did not include any voices to present counter-arguments or the fact that no unmarked graves have actually been confirmed at any residential school. This illustrates how an unbalanced wire story can be picked up and quickly under-inform the public. Other news stories, including those produced by the CBC, Global, APTN and National Observer, were also absent of skepticism.  The Globe and Mail recently came around to the fact that no human remains have been confirmed at Kamloops. How long will it take other outlets to do the same?"...  Words do have meaning — especially a word as grave as “genocide.” To activists, however, it is often just a rhetorical tool, a means to an end. It is time for media outlets to recognize this and stop uncritically parroting the pronouncements of unqualified activist panels."

The Canada ‘genocide’ is a tale for the 2020s - "May 2021 was an era more febrile than factual, and it’s no coincidence that the gothic stories about murdered indigenous children, followed by furious national protests, emerged just after the first anniversary of the killing of George Floyd. The Canadian politician Carolyn Bennett made the connection explicit: “This week has opened the eyes of many Canadians, just like George Floyd did.” Hey, so America is having race riots and national self-flagellations? Well, Canada can do that, too! ... the story didn’t “create itself” —  it was pushed by activists and politicians who saw an opportunity to bully and silence people while scoring virtue points.  The few journalists who did scrutinise the graves story, such as Terry Glavin, whose articles  about this saga are lucid and enraging, were vilified as genocide enablers. Anyone who dared to question  allegations of mass child murder was accused of “residential school denialism”, which several Canadian politicians sought to make a crime on a par with Holocaust denialism. One such politician is Leah Gazan, a New Democratic Party MP. Gazan was in the news for a different reason two months ago, when in a press conference she referred to “the ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+”, which is a yet further elaboration of the ever-expanding LGBT acronym. When many pointed out that it sounds more like a wifi password than shorthand for oppressed people, Gazan dismissed them as “bigots”.  Because that’s the modern activist playbook right there: make a wildly extreme statement, bandy around terms like “genocide” and denounce anyone who doesn’t swallow it all unquestioningly as a fascist. Then move on to the next cause and destroy their credibility too... it combined voyeuristic ghoulishness with white guilt and scolding — it couldn’t have been more of a 2020s story if it had somehow involved Taylor Swift.  Activists and politicians love to talk about accountability, but only in regard to other people. When it emerges that they’re the ones who screwed up, who denounced innocent journalists, exploited the pain of vulnerable people, muddied the facts of a real tragedy, used graves for a photoshoot with a teddy bear, suddenly the past — ie five years ago — is ancient history and we should all get over it."
There're left wingers still clinging on to the lie, but those who want to get over it do the same with covid too, while still obsessing over slavery etc from much much further back

There is no reconciliation without truth - The Globe and Mail - "Five years after the startling announcement that there were hundreds of possible unmarked graves near a residential school in Kamloops, B.C., there has been no public confirmation of the discovery of any human remains. That is reality, one reality... The fact of the crimes committed against Indigenous children at residential schools over many decades does not automatically validate claims that hundreds of students were dumped into unmarked graves in Kamloops and other residential schools. That is an extraordinary assertion, one that requires proof.  That should have been the starting point for the media in May, 2021, when the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation first issued a press release announcing the “confirmation of the remains of 215 children of the Kamloops Indian Residential School” through the use of ground-penetrating radar that identified subterranean anomalies.  The media, including The Globe and Mail, did not initially scrutinize, much less challenge, that assertion. The initial headlines and stories in the media simply stated as fact that the remains of 215 children had been found. Many of those early stories, including in this newspaper, made reference to “mass graves” (a historically fraught phrase that does not appear in the Tk’emlúps 2021 press release).  Perhaps it will be proven, some day, that there are hundreds of unmarked graves at Kamloops. But it was not proven to be true in May, 2021. It is not proven to be true today.  The media changed the description of what had been discovered at Kamloops through the summer of 2021 to possible or probable graves, particularly after an expert working on the Kamloops site made clear the limitations of ground-penetrating radar. Indeed, by February, 2026, the band itself issued a press release referring only to “potential burials.”  That evolution in language does not erase the initial failure of journalism. The lesson of 2021 should be: assertions about residential schools should be listened to carefully, and then, just as carefully, held up to scrutiny.  Politicians also helped to fuel public perceptions that the bodies of hundreds of children had been found. John Horgan, then B.C. premier, called Kamloops “a tragedy of unimaginable proportions” in the wake of the initial announcement. Mr. Horgan had no way of knowing whether that was true.  Former prime minister Justin Trudeau made much more dramatic pronouncements that were also not founded in fact. Three days after the Tk’emlúps announcement, Mr. Trudeau ordered that the Canadian flag be flown at half-mast at all federal buildings “to honour the 215 children whose lives were taken at the former Kamloops residential school.” Like Mr. Horgan, the former prime minister had no factual basis for that and other similar statements. Unlike Mr. Horgan, who died in 2024, Mr. Trudeau still has the opportunity to set the record straight. He has not; neither has the current Liberal government. Nor has Ottawa provided clarity on how the hundreds of millions of dollars sent to First Nations to establish whether the soil anomalies are human remains have been spent. Canadians are owed an explanation.  First Nations are owed a greater debt. Lasting reconciliation between Indigenous communities and the rest of Canada has barely begun. But that reconciliation must be founded on the truth, wherever it leads."

Jonathan Kay on X - "amazing: On Friday, when @globeandmail (finally!) admitted that no actual “unmarked graves” are known to have been found at Kamloops, their social media ppl, out of sheer habit, tweeted the old lie that “remains” were found. They hastily deleted it but forgot to delete the thread"

Jonathan Kay on X - "Wow. The editorial board of the Globe & Mail just flat out admitted that it screwed up by failing to scrutinize the false 2021 claims that “unmarked graves” had been “confirmed” at Kamloops. It’s taken five years, which is a disgrace, but give them credit for finally saying it"
Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers on X - "In 2021, Canadian media and institutions basically hallucinated the discovery of 215 children’s bodies in a mass grave near a former Catholic residential school.  The evidence: radar saw soil disturbances that could have been tree roots.  A wave of church arsons ensued.    People making the case for censorship often urge that destructive manias like this can be suppressed/soothed if we prevent people from communicating about them.  And here was a perfect case: false information was being recklessly (or maliciously) amplified, leading to literal hate crimes.   Shouldn’t the censors do something?   But the mass-grave craze infected the censorship class, so opposition got targeted instead.  At least one “disinformation” NGO categorized skepticism as “hate speech,” and Canada even saw efforts to criminalize so-called “denialism” (drawing an absurd comparison to the Holocaust).    Good for the Globe and Mail to come clean."

Jonathan Kay on X - "So how does this work, @LeahGazan Does the entire editorial staff of the Globe & Mail go to jail, or just the editorial board ?"

Jonathan Kay on X - "If anyone wonders how these two loons are coping with the @globeandmail editorial admitting that there aren’t any “unmarked graves” in Kamloops, an update:
— Carleton: the Globe has been taken over by conspiracy theorists
— Gilmore: the Globe is affected by gas poisoning"
Meme - Sean Carleton @SeanCarleton: "Absolutely appalling editorial by the Globe and Mail that buys/perpetuates all the false framing of the far right and platforms an anti-Indigenous conspiracy theory my research has debunked."
Rachel Gilmore @atRachelGilm...: "Someone should probably find out if there was a gas leak at the Globe and Mail. Short of that, it's hard to fathom why their editorial board thought it was a good idea to publish their piece on potential unmarked graves at residential schools. This navel-gazing, both-sides Show more"

Globe digs itself even deeper with mea culpa about Kamloops coverage | National Post - "Ironically, for a piece centred on journalistic shortcomings, this defensive editorial not only itself contains significant journalistic shortcomings, but fails to deliver the only conclusion that merits genuine approval.  In the first paragraph, they admit that they wrongly accepted as true the 2021 allegation of “unmarked graves” near the former Kamloops, B.C., residential school without a shred of evidence to back up the claim. Fine. But in the very next paragraph, they state: “3,200 Indigenous children, at least, died at residential schools, according to the 2015 report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” Not true, according to Nina Green, an independent researcher whose website Indian Residential School Records is a documentary treasure trove on this issue. For many years, it has been Green’s regular habit to send mass emails to politicians and journalists across Canada, including the Globe, correcting the errors she finds in their reportage. With attached receipts, of course. (The Globe has never responded to them, Green tells me.)  In her latest missive, which unpacks the Globe editorial, she writes that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) claimed no such thing. The TRC states that 423 named children died “on the premises” of a residential school, or 832 when the named and unnamed registers are combined. Which amounts to 832 children “out of the 150,000 children alleged to have attended the 139 schools over a period of 133 years” —  a little over six deaths a year in the entire residential school system.  For another error, the Globe editorial states that an unnamed “government official” in the early 1900s considered deaths at residential schools to be the result of negligence so pervasive it “came unpleasantly close to manslaughter.” But the source was not a government official. Toronto judge and reformer Samuel Hume Blake wrote a pamphlet in the form of a letter to the Minister of the Interior in January 1907. His subject was not the residential schools, but the “lack of sanitation in Indian homes on reserves” that led inevitably to tuberculosis. Blake wrote: “(D)oing nothing to obviate the preventable causes of death brings the Department within unpleasant nearness to the charge of manslaughter.” (My emphasis.) Amongst other recommendations, Blake called for the establishment of clinical centres with trained nurses to give instruction to Indian women and children “in the ordinary hygienic rules — the non-observance of which cultivates tuberculosis and scrofulous affections — principal causes in the high death rate.” The Globe’s error turned beneficence into wickedness. Many Canadians now feel they have been gaslighted for five long years. Not just by the Globe and the CBC. With the exception of the National Post and independent media like Rebel News, True North, Juno News and the Dorchester Review, Canadian journalists as a whole showed virtually no curiosity regarding a story absolutely riddled with implausibilities. For example, Kamloops always had Indigenous staffers. They would have been aware of these alleged burials. Yet we are to believe there wasn’t a single whistleblower amongst them in all these years? No missing-child reports filed by families whose children allegedly never came home from school? Please. The consequences of choosing advocacy over journalism have been dreadful: aside from 100-plus burned or vandalized churches (including two deaths) and a marked rise of anti-Catholicism, we have also seen a heavy price paid by honourable scholars who voiced their evidence-based skepticism from the get-go. Misleading media endorsements have been largely responsible for trivialization of the Holocaust and a race for supremacy in virtuous distancing from “denialism” amongst professional associations, school boards and universities, not to mention cabinet ministers. It is because of these harms, intimately connected to media dereliction of duty, that I believe the Globe editorial should not have been written by the board, but by the editor-in-chief, David Walmsley, at whose desk the buck stopped on how the Kamloops story should be framed. And the final words of that editorial should have been the announcement of his resignation.  For this was not just a sorry-we-goofed error in need of correction. Chief Roseanne Casimir asserted, in a resolution put forward at a July 2021 meeting of the Assembly of First Nations, that “the mass grave discovered at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School reveals Crown conduct reflecting a pattern of genocide against Indigenous peoples.” Yes, she said “mass grave” — implying it was a horrific massacre — and nobody in the media said boo. That’s a blood libel of priests and nuns and missionaries who aren’t here to defend themselves.  Worse, the allegation was directly implicated as motivation for an all-party Parliamentary resolution recognizing the residential schools as a “genocide.”  The Kamloops fiasco has changed this nation for the worse. Canadians were made by their government to feel shamed, demoralized and bitter in being labelled génocidaires. The breadcrumb trail from these feelings leads directly to the media. Sorry, but a head must roll for that. Reconciliation? When First Nation leaders join other Canadians in calling for an annulment of the genocide resolution, we will know that the reconciliation process has begun."

Blacklock's Reporter on X - ".@SenateCA panel votes 7-1 to rewrite gov't bill #C9 to outlaw Indian Residential School "denialism" under threat of two years' jailing: 'It can involve minimizing or denying the deaths.'"

Tamara Lich 🇨🇦 on X - "What do you call a country that criminalizes beliefs, thoughts, speech and questions? 🧐"

Cory Morgan on X - "The body count at the Kamloops residential school site remains at zero. I said it before, and I will say it again. I dare you to charge me. Then we will get some shovels out during the process of discovery."

Aaron Pete on X - "I'm prepared to go to jail over this.  My grandmother Rita Pete went to St. Mary's Indian Residential School. She experienced terrible abuse. As a consequence, she struggled with alcohol use most of her life.  My mother was born with FASD as a consequence of her using alcohol to cope with her trauma.   I am Chief of my community Chawathil First Nation. I am working to address the longstanding impacts of these past policies through renovating homes, building new homes, creating childcare, and growing businesses through economic development.  I have interviewed people who went to Indian Residential Schools. I have interviewed people who believe Indian Residential Schools were awful, horrible schools, meant to remove the Indian from the child.   I've also interviewed people who believe they were well intended,  generous investments by Canadian taxpayers meant to assimilate a society and had shortcomings.  Like with many things, the history is dark, complicated, and with any policy that existed for a long time, across a whole country - there were different experiences.    No one story tells us everything. No report shares the full experience of the individuals who went. No commentator today can disprove someone's lived experience with statistics.  The path forward is not to criminalize speech, questions, or debate.   The path forward is empathy for past attendees.  The path forward is truth based on facts. The path forward is real conversations. The path forward is to lean into complexity.   If the government criminalizes this, then I will be a criminal for having these conversations.   If I am a criminal by the laws definition, then I am committed to going to jail over this."
Damn Uncle Tomahawk!

Melissa Mbarki on X - "No “mass grave” was discovered at the site of the Kamloops Indian residential school five years ago. Even the Tkemlúps te Secwepemc Nation at Kamloops refuted that characterization within a week of the initial round of shocking headlines. Ever since, the Tkemlúps have gone back and forth on the subject, aided by $12.1 million in federal funds, from “probable burials” to graves to “signatures that resemble burials.”  The hundreds of graves “found” at Marieval in Saskatchewan, where Trudeau famously posed kneeling at a gravesite holding a teddy bear, were ordinary burials in a Cowessess community cemetery where gravestones had been removed. Cowessess elder and former Marieval student Lloyd Lerat said this about the graves: “We’ve always known these were there.… It’s just the fact that the media picked up on unmarked graves, and the story actually created itself from there because that’s how it happens.”  The 182 graves “discovered” near the old St. Eugene’s residential school in B.C. at the Ktunaxa community of ʔAq’am were burials in a former pioneer cemetery later associated with a hospital and a Catholic mission that had lost its wooden crosses to grass fires over the years. “There’s no discovery, we knew it was there, it’s a graveyard,” Sophie Pierre, a former St. Eugene’s student who served for 25 years as the Ktunaxa tribal chair, explained later. “The fact there are graves inside a graveyard shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.”  The 160 “unmarked graves” reported on Penelakut Island were not newly discovered. Some were associated with a cemetery, others were inferred from ground penetrating radar research, and more were the result of archeological surveys on the island’s foreshore. Twenty years earlier the RCMP had excavated a rumoured residential-school burial site on the island and came up with nothing."

The Reclamare on X - "Apl 3, 1915 Lytton BC "As the Indians are so anxious to get their children taught, and have gone to the expense and trouble in building the school, I would strongly recommend that the Department sanctions their wish and supplies them with a teacher""
How disgraceful. Their memories need to be wiped from history for asking for Genocide!

Meme - "-"We are just trying to protect our sacred land"
- Their sacred land... *lots of trash scattered around*"

Cowichan Tribes seeks federal help to deal with mountain of waste | Vancouver Sun - "Cowichan Tribes is urging the federal government to ensure that a growing mountain of construction waste and garbage that threatens to leach toxic chemicals into the Cowichan River is cleaned up and the owner prosecuted.  “The tools to combat the pollution of reserve lands are primarily under federal jurisdiction, including the Indian Act and the Indian Reserve Waste Disposal Regulations,” the nation said in a statement on Monday. “However, the government of Canada is reluctant to prosecute polluters.”  The garbage pile is on three lots on Cowichan Tribes reserve land near the Allenby Road Bridge over the Cowichan River. The province’s Environment Ministry has ordered James Anthony Peter, who lives on one of the lots and controls access to all three, to submit a plan by Nov. 17 to clean up the properties.  The 290,000 cubic metres of waste contain elevated concentrations of copper and zinc and other “substances of concern,” including heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, iron, lead and manganese, according to recent environmental reports...  Cowichan Tribes said it has been “deeply concerned” about illegal dumping of garbage, construction and industrial waste and contaminated materials on reserve lands...  Cowichan Tribes said those lived on the reserve are served through a curbside collection program that provides garbage pickups two days a week, and recycling and compost collection one day a week."
It's racist to prosecute indigenous people, so
Clearly, they need their trash collected three days a week, while most Canadians have it collected every week or every two weeks

Revenge of the Blob: good teachers are under siege

Revenge of the Blob: good teachers are under siege | The Spectator

Jolyon Maugham has a point. There is a need for an inquiry in the aftermath of Jason Arday’s tragic death. But, not for the first time, the Good Law Project director has identified the wrong target.

It’s not the press that needs to be investigated and held to account. If newspapers and magazines, including this one, err or fail, libel or traduce, then the courts can sanction and readers can desert. We survive, to publish, by public demand. The real focus of inquiry – sustained and detailed – should be Cambridge University and, in particular, its Faculty of Education. They were Professor Arday’s employers. Indeed, more than that, they were his champions and cheerleaders, beckoning the limelight to vaunt his appointment.

Arday’s death is a cause of profound sadness. The reasons for it cannot yet be known. Professional physicians, and indeed the Samaritans, caution against attributing suicide to any single cause. A proper respect for his life, and indeed all those who may struggle with thoughts of self-harm, suggests that caution should be exercised before judging what led to his passing.

But the attention drawn to Cambridge’s role in this affair is more than merited. The university’s Faculty of Education, where Arday was professor of the sociology of education, is one of the most prestigious teacher-training institutions in the country, responsible for preparing thousands of graduates for classrooms in state schools across the country.

Its existence, and eminence, is underpinned by the taxpayer and guaranteed by the government. Support for tuition, and research, flows from your pockets. Those who graduate from the institution form the minds of the next generation. We all have an interest in how its funds are spent and how it shapes our children’s learning.

I first raised concerns about what education faculties at our universities were doing more than a decade ago. I specifically questioned the priorities and ideological orientation of those in charge of teacher training in higher-education institutions such as Cambridge. I feared that, despite the noble idealism and genuine commitment of the overwhelming number of teachers in our classrooms, the academics preparing them for their vocation were letting them, and us, down. There was, I suggested, perhaps incautiously, a ‘blob’ of university professionals whose values, and approach, was inimical to educational excellence.

I was derided for daring to question their credentials and authority. One of those most vehement in their criticism was Hilary Cremin, the head of the Education Faculty. Professor Cremin was the individual who praised Arday on his appointment as ‘the best in the world in terms of the research that you do’. Whatever her motivation for that encomium, a single sentence should not define a career. But Professor Cremin, helpfully for us all, has written at length recently on her own educational philosophy and world outlook. So we can judge her by her own, considered, thoughts.

The range of her thinking is laid out in her book, Rewilding Education. Charles Moore touched on its flaws in these pages last week. It would require more space than either Charles or I are allowed, and more tolerance on the part of our readers than we have a right to expect, to go through its idiocies.

The work actively rejects not just the need for discipline, knowledge and testing in schools but the very idea of our schools themselves. They are damned as embodiments of a failed neo-liberal notion of modernity built on the flawed principles of the Enlightenment. Michel Foucault is cited promiscuously and approvingly. Foucault was, to be fair, a stern and consistent critic of the Enlightenment. So consistent, he welcomed the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution and the theocratic bloodshed which followed. So there is that.

And indeed Cremin is nothing if not thorough in her disdain for Enlightenment principles – as we can see in her approach to questions of evidence, proof and logic. She is specifically sceptical of ‘empirical truth’, which she sees as ‘favouring a modern, urban, liberal, Western view of the World’. Instead of this ‘epistemology of the North’, Cremin argues that we might want to achieve ‘cognitive justice’ by ‘foregrounding the epistemology of the South which challenges the dominance of the Eurocentric thought of the global North’.

The book exhibits all the weaknesses of modern academia: solipsistic personal reminiscence is treated as ‘fieldwork’, spurious authority is sought by citing other works, themselves written in impenetrable jargon, statistics are deployed in an effort to prove a point but without any recognition that correlation does not equal causation.

Cremin cites some of her own work as ‘evidence’ for her assertions. Specifically, 11 of her own ‘poems’. These include stanzas such as this from a poem called ‘Postscript’:

Meet my eyes

Know my voice

I am

Researcher

Sharing songs

Walking with

Dancing through.

Should we not be persuaded by Professor Cremin’s own verse as proof of her wisdom, we are also treated to a passage where she advertises the virtue of ‘rebellious research’ – specifically an ‘expressive dance’ with an MPhil student in a workshop. The rebellious researchers ‘danced our academic trajectories’ in ‘a form of embodied conversation…circling around each other, moving in and away, connecting and disconnecting… [as we] expressed our hopes and fears for the future of academia’.

Reading this dreck, I certainly found my body reacting in its own distinctive way, reflecting my own hopes and fears for the future of academia.

Professor Cremin is not a junior research fellow feeling her way to an understanding of her discipline; nor is she Titania McGrath’s woker sister. She is the woman responsible for what those who are supposed to be our best teachers are themselves taught. And yet in her major published work she doesn’t just display ignorance, she flaunts and celebrates it. By dancing on the grave of learning.

Professor Cremin is not an isolated example. Certainly not in Cambridge, anyway. As Andrew Gilligan has reported for The Spectator’s website, one of the other Education Faculty academics, Farah Ahmed, has denounced ‘western education’ as a ‘threat’ to Muslims but has encouraged her co-religionists to make an exception for engineering ‘to produce advanced weaponry for Jihad’.

The screaming tragedy of this affair is that while Cambridge – and other university education faculties – are peddling this toxic nonsense, there are examples of how genuinely to transform the opportunities of working–class and ethnic minority children across the country which Cambridge and much of the rest of the educational establishment deride or ignore.

This month we have been able to compare the performance of schools across England, at A-level and GCSE. We can discern which schools are doing well. Those you might think it would be wise for institutions like Cambridge to celebrate and learn from.

There is a rich diet of data from which to draw. But perhaps the best single reference point is a measure known as Progress 8. It is the brainchild of the wonderful Lib Dem former schools minister David Laws and it analyses how much the educational performance of children has improved while in school – in crude terms, the value added. It looks at the level children have reached on entry to secondary school – their scores in tests at the end of primary school – and then records the progress of that cohort at age 16, after GCSEs have been taken.

It is fairer than looking just at A–level performance because many secondary schools have no sixth forms. And it is fairer than looking at GCSE results on their own, because it takes full account of the prior attainment of students. So schools with less well-educated or disadvantaged intakes have that challenge factored into the overall judgment.

It’s worth noting that we have this measure, and thus the ability to identify the best state schools in the country, only because we have Sats at the end of primary school and GCSE exams at age 16, both interventions which Professor Cremin and her allies in the teaching unions hate.

The school in England which performs best in Progress 8 measures is a state comprehensive in Wembley: the Michaela Community School. It is followed closely by Mercia School, another comprehensive in a working-class area of Sheffield, modelled directly on Michaela. Also in the top ten are sister comprehensives in Hackney: Mossbourne Victoria Park Academy and Mossbourne Community Academy. All serve poorer, multi-ethnic communities. All are non-selective in who they admit. All transform lives with performance at GCSE which transcends what many fee-paying independent schools are capable of.

One might hope that these schools and their leaders would be celebrated by professional associations, lauded by a left-wing government for the opportunities they are extending to working-class children and held up by the university education departments which train our teachers as the models to emulate.

But instead they are stigmatised, shamed and shunned. The teaching unions and school leader bodies which are supposed to fight for better educational outcomes are either scornful or embarrassed by these schools. Labour ministers mock or belittle. Those in higher education sneer and denounce. The achievements of Michaela’s headteacher, the inspirational Katharine Birbalsingh, are derided and attributed either to selection (which the school does not and cannot practise) or statistical legerdemain. Mossbourne Victoria Park has been targeted by teaching unions and left-wing activists precisely because it is successful, with anger directed in particular at its strict behaviour policy.

A calm and purposeful environment in which teachers can teach and pupils learn might seem a curious educational feature to find objectionable in a school. But that would be to misunderstand what drives the ideologues within our university education departments and their union allies. What unites so many of the schools which do best in the Progress 8 measurement is their belief in formal uniform, high standards of behaviour, academic rigour, regular testing, direct instruction with a didactic approach from teachers and an avoidance of the ‘group-based’ or ‘child-centred’ learning which the university teacher trainers believe in.

The success of these schools is a ringing, powerful, empirically sound and uncontestable refutation of all the theory and ideology to which Professor Cremin and her allies have devoted their careers. They hate these schools as the Magisterium hated Galileo – all their pretended authority is undone by the hard truth of proven evidence.

What makes this lesson urgent is that the cause which Professor Cremin and her allies affect to believe in – the liberation of the poorest and the marginalised – is advanced by the schools whose methods they abjure and whose leaders they scorn.

There is nothing base or ignoble, indeed there is an idealism and compassion, in wishing to give young people from communities scarred by prejudice additional help to succeed. There is everything to be said for asking how we might better help children living with autism or other disabilities get the best opportunities to flourish. It is both economically enlightened and ethically admirable to want to give students from our poorest backgrounds the best possible educational experience. That is what Katharine Birbalsingh does at Michaela, what happens at Mercia School and what they ensure occurs at both Mossbourne Academies. It is what the free schools, academies and other comprehensives do when they embrace traditional teaching methods, rigour in the curriculum and regular testing.

If we want to ensure that more young people from ethnic minorities, poor backgrounds or living with disabilities succeed then we need more schools like these. And if the government wants to know where to find the money, then I have a suggestion. Perhaps, when any future inquiry inevitablyconcludes that the Cambridge Education Faculty should be closed down, the funds liberated thereby could help?

Related:

Neil O'Brien on X - "It's not just "garbage" - bits of our universities have flipped from promoting knowledge and high standards to actively trying to destroy them. Via @michaelgove"

Marcus Walker on X - "The reputation of Britain’s universities will continue to collapse until this entire framework of thinking is driven out of them."

John Duffield on X - "Jason Arday's boss at Cambridge. No one as been held to account for the scandal & corruption of Arday's appointment. Until they are this story will not go away. Why the story ran & ran. It was not motivated out of personal spite towards Arday."

Eric Nelson on X - "My son was going to college to be a special ed teacher. A professor said it was colonialist to expect a journal article to contain empirical evidence. His classmates all agreed. He changed majors."

Links - 23rd September 2026 (1 - UK Politics)

Polanski likes post calling Right-wing rivals goose-stepping Hitler fans - "Zack Polanski has liked online posts suggesting his Right-wing rivals support Adolf Hitler, amid an ongoing row with Nigel Farage over his social media content."

Farage refers Polanski to police over guillotine online post - "  Zack Polanski has been referred to the Metropolitan Police by Nigel Farage for sharing a post that appeared to threaten the Reform leader.  The Green Party leader posted an image of a man wearing a T-shirt with a guillotine graphic alongside the caption: “We’re only making plans for Nigel.”  Mr Polanski shared the photograph with his 700,000 Instagram followers as part of a series of images from a Green Party rally in Bristol on July 26... The post comes less than three weeks after the death of Ann Widdecombe. The Reform UK spokesman for immigration and justice died after being hit on the head with a hammer 21 times at her home in Devon.  Joshua Kerry, a 28-year-old administrative worker, appeared in court last week charged with the murder of the veteran politician... Mr Farage has spoken out repeatedly about the level of abuse and threats of violence that he receives as leader of the Reform Party. He has received nearly 600 death threats this year alone."
Damn violent far right extremists!

The wheels are coming off the dim-witted authoritarian known as Zack Polanski - "The T-shirt image is awful, but I don’t want anyone arrested for social media posts, as I believe in free speech. It is worth noting, however, that when Graham Linehan was arrested by five armed police officers for trans-critical tweets, Polanski described this arrest as “proportionate”.  I also never expected Polanski to roll out the free speech defence on Newsnight, given that he runs a party in which women are not allowed to say that men are not, in fact, women, or to deviate from the prescribed line on Israel. He is a dim-witted authoritarian.  He has form when it comes to serious social media gaffes. He criticised the police after the Golders Green stabbing, which earned him a rebuke from Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Police Commissioner.  I presumed he would use the Newsnight interview to apologise and try to move on. But then no one can quite reckon with Polanski’s ego and his whacked-out notion that he is the victim in all this... Polanski never simply answers a question. He always reframes the premise of the question to put his view across. This “reframing” is a technique from neuro-linguistic programming, which, I venture, he dabbled in as part of becoming a hypnotist.  It has worked well to an extent, but when confronted with Newsnight’s incredulous Victoria Derbyshire and this nasty image, it fell apart. He tried to present himself as the victim, saying that, in drawing attention to this photo, which got reposted everywhere, Farage had put his (Polanski’s) life in danger and was the one who needed to apologise. The wheels are clearly coming off the electric vehicle. A year into the job, Polanski does not do well under scrutiny. He thought he had the monopoly on social media. He thought he owned the hopey-feely narrative. He thought he could get away with vibes and very little policy beyond “tax the rich”.  Now, Andy Burnham has come along, and everything has changed. The Greens, full of the dregs of the Corbynites, seem determined to play to their worst sides in the name of “radicalism”... Described as “chronically online”, he looked deeply uncomfortable on Newsnight. One of his gurus, Gary Stevenson, the wealth tax campaigner, is stopping his YouTube channel because he feels burnt out. This comes after a Channel 4 documentary in which his ideas were roundly taken apart by a series of experts.  Polanski has boasted that his party would replace Labour. But polling is showing the opposite. This, of course, may be down to the “Burnham bounce” – everything is febrile at the moment... he will not deign to apologise for images of hate."
It's only hate if it threatens the left wing agenda

Greens rack up £1m legal bill in year of ‘unwinnable’ trans battles - "The Green Party has spent more than £1m on legal costs in the past year, amid accusations that pro-transgender “ideologues” within the party are pursuing unwinnable claims.  The amount spent on legal and professional fees by the Greens quadrupled between 2024 and 2025, according to the party’s annual accounts.  Critics accused the Greens of “throwing money down the drain” by fighting legal battles with “ideological zeal” against people with gender-critical views.  Green party sources said that as the party was growing, its associated legal, administrative and governance costs were also increasing.  In 2024, the party was found to have discriminated against its former deputy leader over his gender-critical beliefs.  A court ruled that the party had improperly dismissed Shahrar Ali – who believes that “biology is real and immutable” – as party spokesman because it had failed to identify any misconduct. The Mayor’s and City County Court awarded £9,100 in damages to Mr Ali. Mr Ali is taking the Greens to court again for further unlawful discrimination and victimisation, over his expulsion from the party... pro-transgender “ideologues” had “taken the party hostage” and were “fighting their own personal battles by using Green Party member money”... The party is being sued by another former member who was suspended for mocking “fairy” pronouns.  Emma Bateman, who was co-chairman of Green Party Women, was found to have breached diversity rules by making “clearly antagonistic” comments about “fae/faer” pronouns used by people who believe they are mythical beings. She was also condemned for using the terms “pronoun police” and “cognitive cis-connance” during a speech in Hyde Park, leading to a three-month suspension and disqualification from the women’s committee for nine months.Ms Bateman, 58, is suing the party for discrimination under the Equality Act 2010 after being repeatedly suspended and eventually expelled for her gender-critical views.  Ms Bateman’s legal battles with the party stretch back years. She said she was first put on a “no-fault” suspension in 2021 after asking whether Kathryn Bristow, then the co-chairman of Green Party Women, was biologically female."
Clearly, it's the fault of all the "transphobes" for starting a culture war and forcing the Greens to spend money persecuting them

Green Party moves to strip police of tasers - "Members of the Green Party have proposed stripping police officers of their pepper spray and Tasers.  A motion drawn up by the party’s crime and justice working group says the party should pledge to “withdraw lethal tools and tactics, eg tasers, pepper spray” from police. It calls for the Left-wing party, led by Zack Polanski, to move money and investment away from “policing, prisons and surveillance” to reduce the “reliance on police”. Members called for policy programmes that “over-police marginalised communities” to be cancelled, and singled out the Prevent anti-radicalisation programme as an example of a policy it would scrap.  The “closure of all prisons through systemic obsolescence” would also become party policy if the motion, first reported by The Times, were adopted... Green Party members have also demanded that it support repealing laws on drugs, sex work, illegal migration and vagrancy, as well as protest-related laws, such as the decision to proscribe Palestine Action. For the latter, amnesties are proposed for those convicted.  The motion backs raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14, and creating a presumption against prosecution for those up to 18 unless there is a compelling public safety reason."

Iran has already invaded Britain – Burnham just hasn’t noticed yet - "We may be on the brink of war – and yet the new Prime Minister Andy Burnham appears to be more interested in TikTok videos for his “No 10 North” gimmick than the defence of the realm.  Over the past 24 hours, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Iranian regime’s ideological army, has explicitly threatened to attack Britain... the Iranian regime’s hostile threats and acts against Britain would have taken place irrespective of Burnham’s green light to US president Donald Trump.  This is evidenced by the fact that it attacked our base in Cyprus before Starmer agreed to allow Washington to use British bases. Not to mention the 20-plus terrorist attacks the IRGC has sought to carry out in Britain in just the past four years. Put simply: the Islamic regime in Iran has long been at war with Britain. The latest example of this is The Telegraph’s revelation that the IRGC’s Unit 700 branch has been exploiting the small-boats crisis to smuggle “Islamic revolutionary agents” into the UK and position them across London. As one Iranian regime official brazenly told The Telegraph on Friday: “We do not need a missile to target London.”... Burnham is certainly not to blame for the IRGC’s most recent reckless threat, but the same cannot be said about his government’s tepid response to the Iranian regime’s near-declaration of war.  The reaction should at the very least have led to the summoning of the Iranian ambassador and the issuing of a clear warning to Tehran that any attack on Britain would have serious consequences. Instead, Burnham’s government released a half-baked statement that Britain was ready to “defend” itself whilst “not getting drawn into the wider conflict”... the IRGC has had a long-standing covert presence in Britain. It has de facto built an entire “soft-power” infrastructure on British soil under the “legitimate” guise of mosques, charities, and colleges.  The effectiveness of this model is that, while the infrastructure is not officially registered in the IRGC’s name and is not directly created, financed, or run by the group, it nonetheless facilitates affiliated activities while providing the regime with enough space to deny responsibility. Its goal has been to use this infrastructure to nurture home-grown Islamist radicalisation, terrorism, and acts of violence. In doing so, it has successfully cultivated, within segments of the British Muslim community, what can only be described as an Islamist constituency that is loyal to it and its violent extremist ideology.  These tactics mimic those of Isis and al-Qaeda – and yet there has been virtually no attempt to counter it.  I have personally spearheaded investigations exposing how senior IRGC commanders – including those involved in terror plots abroad – have been in contact with university student associations in Britain via Zoom. They even called on these students to join their so-called apocalyptic army that would “bring an end to the life of Zionists and Jews across the world”.  This was not a one-off. Only a few months ago, the Iranian Embassy in London issued a call for British Muslims to register for “self-sacrificing” suicide missions. Figures across this apparatus have even attended and helped facilitate the transfer of Britons to events run by the IRGC and Hezbollah overseas, including the funeral of Hezbollah’s late terror chief, Hassan Nasrallah, in Lebanon.  Perhaps even more disturbingly, the new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei – an IRGC militant in a turban – continues to maintain an office in London.  He even has a personally appointed representative: a senior mullah who, despite continuously expressing extremist views that are sympathetic to the IRGC, not only continues to reside in the UK but runs several charities in his name. This individual does not hold a diplomatic passport, meaning his visa could be immediately revoked. But this, of course, has not happened.   The radical Islamist constituency the Iranian regime has cultivated in Britain is already carrying out acts of intimidation, vandalism, and violence against British Jews and dissident British Iranians in the UK... Instead of pursuing gimmicks, or having his new Defence Secretary condemn Israel – one of Britain’s closest security partners – the Prime Minister should be investing seriously in our defence and our alliances.  In an increasingly hostile world, Britain cannot afford student politics. Sadly, however, Burnham’s government appears more interested in political theatre on TikTok than in national security."
Time to import more migrants, chase the Americans out and condemn Israel again
Of course, all Iran-linked attacks are really Mossad false flags carried out to justify "genocide"

End this suicidal empathy before it is too late - "In 2018 and 2019, Iranian nationals accounted for a large majority of small-boat arrivals. It wasn’t until 2020 that Syrians appeared in significant numbers. But even then they amounted to just 9 per cent of the total, compared to 28 per cent from Iran.  Since 2018, Iranians have formed the largest national group of all illegal migrants, with 30,269 arriving, compared to 27,422 Afghans, 19,157 Iraqis, 15,373 Albanians and just 14,744 Syrians. Last week, the Government disclosed that a series of arson and vandalism attacks on Jewish sites, including the firebombing of charity ambulances, was the work of Iranian proxies in Britain. But the worst may be yet to come. The head of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, has repeatedly warned of Iran-backed terrorist atrocities in Britain, with “more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots” foiled in just one year.  On Thursday, Tehran threatened to attack RAF Fairford – which Andy Burnham has allowed the US to continue to use to launch strikes on Iran. They also made veiled threats against the “British monarchy regime”. With Iranian operatives walking among us, such threats could well become reality. For all the professionalism of our security services, we can’t expect them to play Whack-A-Mole forever.  After years of suicidal empathy in Westminster, Mr Burnham must change course – before it is too late."

Farage: I warned about Iranian operatives two months ago - "Iran has already been exposed for employing thugs from “Thieves-in-Law”, a notorious international criminal gang from the former Soviet Union, to carry out kidnappings on Tehran’s behalf... Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said news of the Channel smuggling was a further reason for Britain to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)... Iran has tried to carry out terrorist attacks on British soil, including one that was foiled hours from being launched in May last year. The regime has also tried to kill or kidnap at least 15 people inside the country, according to a 2025 report by Parliament’s intelligence and security committee, which warned of a “wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable threat”."

The troubling think tank at the heart of government - "In the post-1980s decades, the influence of Right-wing think tanks on Tory governments has been marginal. It is easy to draw up diagrams showing how people working in think tanks then moved into No 10 under various PMs – but all that shows is that there is a career ladder in Right-wing public policy.  But what of Resolution and the NEF? Resolution’s agenda is unambiguous – inequality is the problem that underlies virtually all others in Britain and tackling it must be the number one task of a progressive government.  Higher taxes on wealth, the Resolution thinking goes, is an essential tool for achieving this desideratum. Resolution and the £50m endowment backing it from Sir Clive Cowdery, the insurance tycoon, has certainly turbocharged this argument within Labour. The think tank’s research underpins much Labour thinking on these matters... Other than on the wilder shores of Greenery, there has been a broad consensus in British politics that growth is a good thing. The debate has been not about whether we want growth, but how to achieve this laudable aim. The NEF was set up to go against this consensus, arguing that it is a vestige of – that dreaded word – neo-liberal thinking... Its message since then has been relentless: Neoliberalism is to blame for all the world’s ills and our leaders need to get over their obsession with growth. The relentless onward march of the state has done nothing to dim that delusion.  You might think that recent governments have been rather good at neglecting the imperative of growth, but not good enough to please the NEF and its panjandrums. They want us all to enjoy a three-day week and to take life at a slower pace. The fact that Burnham bangs on about the 1980s wrong turn and the all-pervading influence of neoliberalism perhaps indicates the extent of NEF influence. The NEF had a budget last year of nearly £5m and 43 staff; in contrast, the IEA spent just over £2m and employed 20... Expect to hear much more from NEF in the coming years of the Burnham premiership. If growth fails to materialise, you may even start to hear the claim that this is all part of the 10-year sustainable new economic plan."

Don’t weaponise Gaza, military chiefs warn Streeting - "Wes Streeting “politicised national security” with his public rebuke of Israel’s actions in Gaza, senior military commanders and special-forces veterans have said.  The Defence Secretary launched a pointed attack against Israel last week, accusing it of “falling short” of British military standards in the war with its neighbours.  The remarks angered veterans, prompting a group of high-profile Armed Forces figures to go on the offensive, accusing Mr Streeting of “failing to grasp the danger” the UK was facing."

Our politicians are addicted to social media. It’s making them stupid

Rayner accused of misleading public with CV - "Ms Rayner is the latest in a line of Labour Cabinet ministers to face scrutiny over their CVs, including Rachel Reeves, the former chancellor, and Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary."

Melissa Chen on X - "American friends have been asking about the new British PM.  Sure maybe he'll fix some things on the economic front but I don't think it bodes well at all that he hired the former director of "Hope Not Hate" as his Director of Political Strategy in No. 10.  To contextualize this, imagine if the democratic nominee hires the head of the SPLC to run his political strategy or domestic policy in the White House.  Hope Not Hate is part of the countering hate NGO industrial complex that claims to pursue the goal of fighting "extremism.” In reality it’s a Labour-aligned smear machine that treats millions of ordinary voters as the enemy.   Under Matthew McGregor’s watch and beyond, they jumped into by-elections to hammer Reform UK candidates, then crowed about “breaking” them. Their 2026 “State of Hate” report lumps Reform in with Holocaust denial and Nazi terrorism, then immediately hits you with a fundraising pitch: “Donate to Stop Reform UK.”   The pattern is to pathologize the opposition, fundraise off the panic, rinse, repeat. McGregor later joined the board of Reprieve, the outfit that campaigns to bring back ISIS brides and brands citizenship-stripping as “fundamentally racist” because it mostly hits people with foreign ties. This is the person hired to advise the new PM on strategy, extremism, and national security.  These people are part of the activist blob who spent years branding mainstream concerns about immigration, crime, and free speech as “hate” and "far-right," and marshaled enormous state resources to make sure that legitimate concerns of the population never cause a problem for them politically.  Tl;dr: UK is still screwed"

Ihsan Horani on X - "A new poll finds ALMOST 50 PERCENT of Britons want UK ties with Sudan's military government reduced or severed over Muslim Brotherhood influence.  33 percent say reduce engagement unless the SAF cuts Islamist links. 17 percent say cut ties entirely. 52 percent have no confidence in Britain's asylum screening process to identify applicants linked to armed groups.   Only 5 percent are confident.  The poll was commissioned by Muslims Against Anti-Semitism and Christianophobia. A Muslim-led human rights organisation. Their head Ghanem Nuseibeh was precise:  "The problem the British public feels is how extremists like the Muslim Brotherhood exploit the immigration system to undermine Muslim communities in Britain."  Read that again. A Muslim organisation saying the Brotherhood exploits Muslim communities. Not a right wing think tank. Not a tabloid. A Muslim human rights charity.  The British public has understood the problem clearly. It is the government that has not.  Starmer's successor inherits a country where half the population wants Brotherhood-linked diplomatic ties severed and barely anyone trusts the asylum system to keep Islamist networks out."
Islamophobia!

Corrupted Kingdom by Michael Barrington: 4-star review - "Corruption, according to Robert Barrington, can be identified using a simple four-step test: “Do they have entrusted power? Have they abused it? Is there private gain? And does this harm the public interest?” Barrington is a professor of anti-corruption practice at the University of Sussex and the former head of Transparency International UK... In Corrupted Kingdom: Britain’s Disappearing Integrity – and How We Can Get It Back, Barrington surveys how the country is run, from politics to the police, capitalism to chumocracy. Britain, he suggests, risks tipping into minor African republic territory. That is no glib suggestion: he cites a conversation with a London-based Nigerian banker who tells him: “I used to think that Nigeria and the UK would gradually come closer regarding levels of corruption. I was right, but not in the way I thought. In fact, it’s the UK coming closer to Nigeria, not the other way round.” If that doesn’t make you wince, you’re probably not very British. ion Lucy Denyer Show biography Lucy Denyer Published 04 August 2026 7:15am BST 305 Michelle Mone Baroness Michelle Mone became embroiled in the PPE Medpro scandal after the company secured more than £200m in government contracts Credit: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire  Michelle Mone, you may remember, was elevated to the House of Lords in 2015 as a reward for her “entrepreneurial spirit”. Having impressed David Cameron with her skill at selling underwear, the new baroness went on to outdo herself during the Covid-19 pandemic, when PPE Medpro, a company with which she and her husband, Doug Barrowman, were involved, was awarded government contracts worth more than £200m to supply protective equipment for NHS workers.  Of course, it depends what you mean by “entrepreneurial spirit”. Mone initially denied that she would benefit financially from the deals (she later admitted she had) and denied using her status as a peer to lobby for the contracts. She and Barrowman threatened legal action against media organisations that reported these allegations. Worse still, much of the PPE supplied was deemed unusable. Last October, PPE Medpro was ordered by the High Court to repay £122m, but two months later it entered administration. The public purse is unlikely to recover the money. Mone and Barrowman remain under investigation by the National Crime Agency.  Corruption, according to Robert Barrington, can be identified using a simple four-step test: “Do they have entrusted power? Have they abused it? Is there private gain? And does this harm the public interest?” Barrington is a professor of anti-corruption practice at the University of Sussex and the former head of Transparency International UK, so he is well placed to judge. Mone’s conduct, in his view, comes pretty close “to ticking the four boxes”. But the bigger question raised by his new book is whether a bad apple can ever be separated from the barrel it helps to rot.  In Corrupted Kingdom: Britain’s Disappearing Integrity – and How We Can Get It Back, Barrington surveys how the country is run, from politics to the police, capitalism to chumocracy. Britain, he suggests, risks tipping into minor African republic territory. That is no glib suggestion: he cites a conversation with a London-based Nigerian banker who tells him: “I used to think that Nigeria and the UK would gradually come closer regarding levels of corruption. I was right, but not in the way I thought. In fact, it’s the UK coming closer to Nigeria, not the other way round.” If that doesn’t make you wince, you’re probably not very British.  Our instinct to wince at such a comparison is, in Barrington’s view, part of the problem. Britain likes to imagine its corruption as a special case: less worrisome and more natural, the result of our “elite educational system, dominant financial services sector, rigid class structure and colonial legacy”. Take someone such as Ben Elliot, the Queen’s nephew, former co-chairman of the Conservative Party, and co-founder of a “concierge” business that provides exclusive services to wealthy clients (at one point, including members of the Russian elite). He has been accused of using his connections to introduce Conservative donors to the Royal family. A cynic might call that “corruption”, but it is entirely within the rules. It is far subtler and less venal than what you see in, say, Mexico, where it is routine to pay the police to avoid a penalty, or India, where candidates for the police academy can pay for advance sight of the test papers... t becomes increasingly clear that Britain is at serious risk of the seven pathways to corruption Barrington identifies: the failure of public services; the decline of the public-service ethos; the rise of organised crime; the easy flow of corrupt capital; societal inequality and disillusionment; strategic corruption by states such as Russia; and the threat of state capture through a period of illiberal democracy."

Reform back on top as Burnham bounce falls flat

Wes Streeting donations linked to ‘Crypto King’ fraudster - "Wes Streeting was bankrolled by a think tank linked to one of the world’s most notorious fraudsters, The Telegraph can disclose.  Mr Streeting, who is now the Defence Secretary, accepted £37,500 in donations from Labour for the Long Term (LLT) over 2022 and 2023 despite significant concerns among some senior figures in the party over the source of the funds. Just one month before LLT made its first donation, its founder, David Lawrence, had accepted a £500,000 gift from Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced American cryptocurrency billionaire, who was subsequently sentenced to 25 years in jail for fraud after stealing billions of dollars from his customers."
Damn Nigel Farage!

Labour is letting hard-Left teaching unions take control of Britain’s classrooms - "They didn’t like the removal of Left-wing council control over local schools; and they couldn’t stand that power was being placed into the hands of pioneering free schools and academies. That Powell name-checked Gove in her criticisms of the Tory reforms will not have been a coincidence. To this day, he remains a bogeyman among the more radical parts of the teaching profession.  A cynic might say that this is because he sought to raise standards in all schools, and give parents a greater say over how their children were taught. This was bound to have exposed poor teaching. It’s no coincidence that Labour quickly abandoned Ofsted’s one-word rating system on taking power – a long-standing union demand.  But there is also an ideological dimension to the teaching unions’ positions. They have long opposed the traditional “knowledge-based” approach that many of Gove’s new schools pursued, which tends to see strong discipline as a prerequisite for learning. Boiled down, this emphasises the need to learn hard facts, on the basis that children can only advance if they understand the context in which a subject is being discussed.  The opposing progressive view has its roots all the way back in Rousseau, who believed that children were corrupted by the teaching of traditional knowledge. He argued that, by filling a child with facts and societal norms, you stifle their creativity. This thinking bled into the theories of people such as John Dewey, one of the champions of progressive educational dogma. Dewey’s ideas remain influential within much of progressive educational thinking today, despite the clear evidence of the value for students of a knowledge-based approach... Left-wing activists in the education world have moved beyond their opposition to the Tories’ structural reforms and indeed their championing of a “knowledge-based” curriculum. Increasingly, they are questioning the whole concept of excellence – and certainly the measures required to deliver it.  Accountability itself is an offensive concept to the teaching unions. Phonics, multiplication tests, SATs at the end of primary school, GCSE results in league tables – in short, anything that puts pressure to achieve results on their members – are all potentially on the chopping block. Recent examples of state-school achievement after embracing the Goveite model also perhaps ought to be nervous. Left-wing hostility to the educational marvel Michaela – founded and run by Katharine Birbalsingh – is well documented. They hate her for her unashamedly “small c” conservative views and the strict approach of that school, and are enraged by Michaela’s phenomenal success. The Left is taking aim at other schools that prioritise discipline, accusing them of leaving pupils traumatised."

Spelling tests are ‘draconian’, new Education Secretary claimed - "The new Education Secretary opposed “draconian” spelling tests for primary school pupils, arguing teachers should focus on “creativity” instead.  Lucy Powell, one of Andy Burnham’s closest allies, criticised the “ridiculous” assessments when she was a Labour backbencher, claiming they were being used to “micro-manage” children. She also suggested that secondary school pupils in England should not have to do the same “handful of GCSEs” – currently English language, maths and science – or risk failing because of “a couple of things” they spell incorrectly.  The comments, from an interview in 2019, emerged shortly after Ms Powell was mocked by the Tories for her own spelling and grammar in a social media post celebrating her new role"
When student performance falls, this will be due to Conservative "underfunding"