Alice Hopkin

I’m sure Labour will try to take credit for these figures but numbers are down because of the visa regime that I put in place as Home Secretary. Also worth remembering that Labour opposed @Conservatives whenever we tried to tighten our borders. bbc.co.uk/news/live/cn0g…

The rise in unemployment to 5% is bad, but that excludes sickness benefit. The fuller figure - all out-of-work benefits - is now closer to 15%. frasernelson.com/data/economics/

FYI, as the PM said at #PMQs today, UK inflation peaked at 11.1% in October 2022. But as most people will also remember, this was during a global energy crisis - and inflation surged to similar levels in the rest of Europe. This time, the UK is clearly an outlier... 🤔

UK unemployment rose to 5 per cent in the three months to September, from 4.8 per cent in the previous quarter — highest level since the pandemic. Number of payroll employees fell by 32,000 in October to 30.3 million. Over the year payrolls have contracted by 180,000. So that’s what Chancellor Reeves means by ‘fixing the foundations’!!

The #BBC’s problem was a failure to recognise its own bias. I raised issue this with senior BBC management on numerous occasions. Credulous reporting of Hamas propaganda as fact, selective editing of President Trump, not pulling the Bob Villain feed, the rebuke of Martine Croxall, etc etc They saw each “mistake” as being in isolation and couldn’t or wouldn’t see a wider pattern. I hope that this episode will trigger a broader look at bias, groupthink, and political fashion within the BBC by the BBC. I want the BBC to succeed, it’s a powerful British brand, but it needs a proper kick up the arse for that to happen. Perhaps this is it.

I wonder whether Labour will try to take credit for this fall in immigration. The visa changes that I brought in as Home Secretary have reduced net migration. Those who claimed it couldn’t be done are wrong. ukandeu.ac.uk/the-coming-col…

‘My autistic son was let go by Waitrose. I can fight — too many can’t’. Frances Boyd speaks for so many families - autistic people should be given more work opportunities if we are to help solve the problem of economic inactivity. thetimes.com/article/56eddd…

Increasingly frustrating for those of us who joined the Oxford Union simply to watch decent visiting speakers. After the way these people behaved last week, I’m not sure why anyone would bother making the journey whilst this fiasco is ongoing. They’ve already made all conservatives feel unwelcome, now they’re disrespectful to both guests and members who don’t have time to sit and wait for them to stop arguing.

@jamespriceglos @OxfordUnion @charliekirk11 ✅

🚨 ATTENTION! 🚨 If you, or anyone you know, is a member of the @OxfordUnion, you can to restore respect to a once-great institution. Vote no confidence in the man who cheered the political assassination of the great @charliekirk11. Link to instructions below. Please share!

The Government has promised to publish its strategy to prevent Violence Against Women and Girls on three separate occasions. Each self-imposed deadline has come and gone with no plan. No more delays. No more excuses. Survivors and women deserve better than false promises.

Keir Starmer doesn't want you to watch this.

Stamp duty abolished. £100k off business rates for the high street. 20% off everybody’s electricity bills. British benefits for British people. Motability only for serious disability. Deporting foreign criminals. Policing crime, not speech. Good stuff.

Abolishing stamp duty is the best tax policy I've heard at any party conference in a long long time. Supremely good idea.

Why are we so politically polarised? Because everything is political nowadays. And when the stakes for every vote are high as a consequence, you have to fight hard. My @Telegraph column tonight. telegraph.co.uk/gift/0725ae13c…

This is where politics starts to eat itself. Today it was announced borrowing and spending are soaring. So what is the Government's response? To float out a story they will increase spending by abolishing the 2 child cap. Solely to try and save the Deputy Leadership contest.

Labour are going to drive the national finances into the ground. This would be another £3.5 billion+ that the Chancellor doesn’t have.

I’ve been Foreign Secretary, I’ve done senior ambassadorial appointments. Let me explain why the Mandelson situation is even worse than it first appears. The Foreign Secretary has a huge amount of power when it comes to appointing Heads of Missions. Head of Mission is the general term for Ambassadors, High Commissioners, and Permanent Representatives to international bodies like the UN. Basically the choice of who the top diplomat is in an overseas post is down to the Foreign Secretary. In almost all cases the choice is from a list of career diplomats, who have years (often decades) of experience, have been vetted, and tested by experience, and have previously held junior diplomatic positions around the world. But the Foreign Secretary can choose someone else. Someone without those attributes. Clearly the Foreign Office system doesn’t like it when the FS does this and almost always advises against it. That’s not to say that choosing an outsider is wrong, just that that the FCDO will make it clear that doing so carries additional risks. And those risks sit with the Minister rather than the Department. Obviously I wasn’t involved with any of the conversations about Peter Mandelson but I know the FCDO well and I know the personalities of the people who would have advised David Lammy about this appointment. They would have reminded Lammy that Mandelson had resigned in disgrace twice before. They would have reminded Lammy that Mandelson had a longstanding relationship with Epstein. They would have reminded Lammy that Mandelson had widespread, complicated, and opaque commercial interests. I have no doubt that they would have reminded Lammy that he and the PM were importing significant reputational risk if they appointed Mandelson. I have no doubt they would have unambiguously advised Lammy against appointing Mandelson to the post. And it is now clear that Lammy and Starmer ignored that advice and appointed him anyway. And now we have no ambassador to the USA, a new Foreign Secretary, an imminent state visit, a damaged relationship with the White House, and humiliation for British diplomacy. But most of all we have a number of unanswered questions about what Starmer and Lammy knew, when did they know it, and why they went ahead with Mandelson’s appointment.

Which is totally disingenuous... This Government has not halved the number of hotels - it was @JamesCleverly & I who closed 188 (including the Bell Hotel). Labour squandered that - opening new ones, scrapping the deterrent and driving numbers up by 50%. Stop misleading people.

This is crackers. Empty nesters with bedrooms sitting empty will choose to stay in their homes longer to save a whopping tax bill. So there will be less family homes on the market. So less people will be moving out of starter homes into family homes. So there will be less starter homes available for people trying to get on the housing ladder. And young people will face the brunt, again! We need to stimulate the housing market, not crush it.

The other day, I was asked if the Government can deport foreign criminals legally. Of course it can. Because the Government, with a majority in Parliament, makes the law. Too often, we forget this foundational principle of our political system. A 🧵: