Edward Ware

After 18 months of “standing up to Putin” the Labour govt quietly issued a licence allowing imports of Russian oil refined in third countries. Yesterday Labour MPs voted AGAINST UK oil and gas licences. We are now importing from Russia instead of drilling in the North Sea. Insane.

You might have heard of Maggie Oliver. She's a former Greater Manchester detective who, in 2012, was ordered to abandon her investigation into the systematic rape of children in Rochdale, and decided she would rather resign her warrant card rather than do so. Maggie, as that would imply, is one of the good ones. I constantly ask how our police can consider themselves worthy of the badge if they are not willing to return the badge rather than commit injustice in its name. Maggie did just that; she was asked to cover for criminals, so she told the shirts to stuff themselves and handed back her commission. She won a small but consequential victory in the High Court on Friday. Mr Justice Kimblin granted her foundation a full judicial review of whether the British state has actually done anything about the recommendations it accepted, in 2022, at the end of a seven-year inquiry into the institutional cover-up of decades of child sexual abuse. Maggie Oliver is one woman. She has no political party behind her and no standing in Whitehall. She has no peerage, no chambers, no billionaire foundation footing her bills. She was ordered, by senior officers, to drop her investigation into a network of men who were raping children in industrial quantities in her city, because of the demographics to which those men belong made the whole thing a bit awkward. Fourteen years on, she has done what nobody else in this country has been able to. She has hauled the British state into open court to answer for the choice it made, over four years and under two governments, to hold a seven-year, £200 million inquiry into the institutional cover-up of child abuse and implement, deliberately, none of that inquiry's recommendations. The Home Office accepted those recommendations in 2022. So did the Department for Education, the police inspectorates and the Crown Prosecution Service. And then nothing happened. The recommendations sat. The departments restructured. Ministers rotated. The girls and women who had given evidence aged. More such operations continued around the country, while the men who had run the previous set of them either walked free, left the country, or drew their own pensions. The state, in the manner of every institution Tony Blair ever built, had decided that the writing of the report was the action, and the doing of the report could be handed off to history. That is what Maggie Oliver has now forced into court. And the political class knows what that means. The Home Secretary has not commented. The Prime Minister has not commented. The candidates jockeying through the post-Starmer Labour succession have, at the time of writing, failed even to speak her name, as though they know that, if they do, lightning will flash in the sky and they'll be turned into a pillar of Tesco's-own-brand dishwasher salt. They are silent because they recognise, accurately, that the answers a judicial review will produce - to the question of why their inquiry's findings were treated as ornamental - will, should, must end the careers of every official who was supposed to act on them and did not. That councillors and councils, mayors, indeed entire political parties, will be caught under ultraviolet light and shown for their guilt. It's time a government did what the British state has spent twenty years declining to do. Take on institutional failure. Name the institutions that failed, in public, on the record. Name the officers and officials who covered it up, and the officers and officials who pressed for the cover-up too. Prosecute them under the standards that any other employee of a public organisation defrauding the public would expect to face. The recommendations the inquiry produced must be implemented in full, alongside whatever further measures a second look at the evidence then demands. There will not be another inquiry into the inquiries. There will be the verdicts. Maggie Oliver is one of the bravest people in Britain. She has earned, by her own resignation and by fourteen years and a foundation and a court case carried on her back, the right to expect from a future British government the simple thing that ought to have happened in 2014, in 2016, in 2018, in 2022 and in every other year of this national disgrace. She has not yet been given it; we have not yet been given it. But it will be given, and soon.

There are no good results from Makerfield by election. Either Burnham wins in which case we will be eating pet meat for Christmas or he loses and Starmer clings to power arresting everyone who finds Morecambe and Wise funnier than Rosie Jones.

Streeting throws his hat into the ring.

Ed Davey saying the quiet part out loud. He wants PR to happen just to stop Reform. He sees Reform as a threat to democracy after *checks notes* millions of people voted for Reform to win the local elections. A liberal’s motto is if you can’t beat them, change the system.

I was in Uttoxeter today, so missed this beauty

Starmer cheered by Labour staffers when announcing nationalisation of British Steel. What he didn’t mention was that its been under the government’s control since April 2025, since when: Taxpayers ponied up almost £400 million in the nine months to January 2026 (9 months). The ongoing cost is around £1.3 million per day. State subsidy to reach ~£615 million by June 2026 — and exceed £1.5 billion by 2028 if the current subsidy rate continues.

Bolton's newly elected Green Party Councillor proving the party is still all about the environment

“What else was Hamas supposed to do on October 7?” I don’t know, Owen. Maybe not pick apocalyptic martyrdom over the Saudi-led peace track? They had two options: 1.Normalise with Israel along with the Saudi-led peace initiative. 2.Burn Gaza to the ground for the Ayatollahs’ messianic delusions. They chose door #2 - even after launching 1,550 rockets into Israel in 2023 before October 7. This wasn’t resistance. It was a fanatical death spiral dressed up as liberation

Happy 57th birthday to football legend Dennis Bergkamp

How did she not see that one coming? 😅

Now at the centre of government, but can't even manage to muster a pair of matching socks.

Before and after!

Strait Of Hormuz (Iran) Council Election Result GRN : 37.7% (+37.7) IRCG: 37.5% (+ 2.5) Green GAIN from the IRCG

For decades snobby North London human rights lawyer types thought they knew how to run a country. They’ve had 22 months at it, completely screwed it up, and now they’re getting their arses handed to them. Not as clever as they think, are they?

Britain has a Prime Minister and Labour ministers who called their citizens racists for flying their own flag What the hell did you think was going to happen? Get those lunatics and their disgusting, arrogant, insane, deluded culture out of power The world is far too dangerous to have morons leading the country

Lisa Nandy waking up to see 24 of 25 seats in her area of Wigan go Reform. Angela Rayner waking up to see 18 of 19 seats in Tameside go Reform. If Labour think the answer is to relax immigration & ape the Greens they have no idea what’s going on in their own backyard.

Jeremy Clarkson’s column on Zack Polanski in The Sun is pure gold! 😅😂 He said: "I do wish people would stop touting Zack Polanski as a serious contender in the next election. He isn’t. My donkey is more likely to get elected." He then brings attention to the awkward way in which Polanski was seen running through conference hall: "The man isn’t even built properly - a point that becomes clear if you watch that social media gif of him running through a conference hall. Tom Cruise he is not. It’s like his arms are where his legs should be and vice versa and as a result, he has the stupidest running style I’ve ever seen." Clarkson then comments on Polanski's desperate attempt to try a point the finger at the methods police officers used to apprehend the Golders Green terrorist: "And then there’s what he says. This week, he castigated those policemen who tackled the knife-wielding thug in London, saying he’d seen them 'repeatedly and violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head'," Finally closing with: "And he thinks that normal people with fully formed adult brains will vote for him. Not a chance," Jeremy Clarkson is a national treasure and speaks with common sense. Neither of those qualities will ever be attributed to Zack Polanski. Well done Jezza! 💯👏

Behold, my third favourite sketch from Not the Nine O'clock News. Good morning.