Iain Duncan Smith MP Chingford & Woodford Green

Today, Jimmy Lai and his wife Teresa celebrate 35 years of marriage. This photo was taken before Jimmy's arrest, when he could still sit beside her over dinner. For nearly six years now, a prison cell has taken that away. He is spending this milestone separated from the woman who has stood by him through everything. He deserves to come home to her. #FreeJimmyLai #BringHimHome

We all want Andy Burnham to do well but Britain does not need a people pleaser in Downing Street. Andy Burnham can tour the country and promise everything to everyone. But sooner or later, he must face scrutiny, answer tough questions and tell us what his plan actually is.

The reported sentencing of Craig Foreman to another two years in prison in Iran after a sham hearing is an outrage. No lawyer. No translator. No defence. That is not justice, it is arbitrary detention. Craig and Lindsay's health is deteriorating as they continue their hunger strike. The Foreign Secretary @YvetteCooperMP must now treat this as the urgent crisis it is: secure immediate access to them, challenge Iran's unlawful actions, and ensure those responsible are held to account. The Government's first duty is to protect British citizens abroad. Now is the time to prove it. @FCDOGovUK @FreeLindsayF @freelindscraig

Speaking in today's debate on Iran, Shadow Armed Forces Minister Mark Francois MP highlighted a key point from our report, Development in the Pre-War Era: "Despite the disruption that Iranian proxies have seen to their activities, there remains the potential for their regrouping due to the weak governance and poor economic instability that engulfs parts of the Middle East." Lasting security means tackling not only the threats themselves, but also the conditions that allow them to return. Read the report: coalitionforglobalprosperity.com/research-insig…

China is not just building replicas of US warships. Satellite images analysed by The @Telegraph reveal it is also building models of fighter jets, naval bases and Taiwanese presidential buildings. telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202… Beijing has been using these models to test its ever-growing stockpile of long-range weapons and new AI systems as it prepares to take control of Taiwan – a top priority of Xi Jinping, the Chinese president.

🚨"Should he have declared this? if not, WHY not?" Sir Iain Duncan Smith says Farage's donations are a simple matter of declaration and there is a lot of distraction around the issue. "I don't know if running around holding a by-election has anything to do with this simple point" @MPIainDS | @jkyleofficial

🚨"Fine line between free speech and HATE" Sir Iain Duncan Smith says he backs free speech but those who espouse violence and support terrorists does not count. "I don't know what it is that's wrong with the left, they're the ones that do the huge personal ABUSE " @MPIainDS | @jkyleofficial

Ann embodied something fundamental about this House: the passion and freedom to make our arguments robustly and without fear, and the unique responsibility that we have to the people we represent. The relationship between a Member of Parliament and their constituents is unlike almost anything else. We meet people face to face. We hold surgeries. We go into their homes. If someone is too ill to come and see us, we go and see them. We do so because personal contact with the people we represent is at the heart of our democracy. We must not allow the epitaph of Ann’s terrible murder to be that we withdraw from that responsibility or lose the very thing that makes this place and our democracy so special. But nor can we ignore the increasingly visceral and violent language that is allowed to spread online. The Government, and particularly the Home Secretary, must make it absolutely clear to the social media companies that they have a responsibility to do far more to tackle personal abuse, threats and violent rhetoric. Some of what has been said online following Ann’s murder has been utterly shocking, and we cannot simply pretend that this culture of hatred has no consequences. Ann is not the only Member of Parliament to have been murdered. Jo Cox was murdered. My good friend David Amess was murdered. And the plaques around this Chamber remind us that terrorists have murdered many Members of this House. We must be bold and we must be clear. We will not accept being shut down. We will not accept being prevented from carrying out our duties. And we will not accept being silenced. Because that, I believe, is what Ann would have wanted.

'MPs are the least protected group of people' Coming up on today's Daily T, @CamillaTominey is joined by guest co-host @Jacob_Rees_Mogg and former Tory leader @MPIainDS to discuss the latest developments in the case of Ann Widdecombe’s killing, which has rocked Westminster and the wider political world 🎧 Listen to the full episode from 5pm through the link in our bio

Jacob Rees-Mogg: 'The Left is unbearably self-righteous' On today's Daily T, @CamillaTominey is joined by guest co-host @Jacob_Rees_Mogg and former Tory leader @MPIainDS to discuss the latest developments in the investigation of Ann Widdecombe’s death, which is now being led by counter-terrorism police. They also discuss the public's response to her death, especially from those on the Left 🎧 Listen to the full episode now through the link in our bio

'People are being killed in this country because of their politics' Guest co-host @Jacob_Rees_Mogg and former Tory leader @MPIainDS join @CamillaTominey on today's Daily T episode to discuss the death of former MP Ann Widdecombe, how people on the Left have responded and what this means for the safety of MPs 🎧 Listen to the full episode now through the link in our bio

BREAKING: The UK government has announced that it is using its new powers to proscribe Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation trib.al/rQ9QvBL 📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233

❗️🇨🇳 Mega-embassy judicial review hearings tomorrow and Wednesday. Here's what to expect: 1⃣ It would be fairly normal to lose at this stage (administrative court), and then to appeal. A case of this significance naturally points towards to the higher courts. However: 2⃣ The case for the claimants (Royal Mint Court Residents Association @StopTheEmbassy) is strong, and the judge, Lady Justice Lieven, has a reputation for robustly defending the rule of law. 3⃣ Everything is arguable in the law, and nobody should be over-confident in litigation. We don't know which way this is going to go, but we are hopeful. 4⃣ We also don't know when to expect the judgment. Could be a while. The judiciary recess may delay it. 5⃣ The grounds have been set out in some detail in the press, but our ground 1, which addresses enforceability, is a real problem for the government. See the 📸 below, which is a transcription of the letter Boris Johnson sent to Wang Yi in 2018, which, by the way, the UK government refused to release (got a copy anyway). This clearly indicates that diplomatic consent was given in 2018, at which point, under UK law, inviolability attached to the land. To be clear: Royal Mint Court has been inviolable Chinese government land since 2018, which creates major headaches for the enforceability of conditions agreed in the subsequent planning application. 6⃣ If we lose, we will appeal. If the Government loses, I don't know what they will do. A part of me suspects that they hope we will win, so they can blame us in discussions with the Chinese side. This won't work, however, because the CCP does not understand why Ministers simply couldn't make the mega embassy happen for them, and were totally flummoxed by our processes, especially the humiliation of being rejected unanimously by Tower Hamlets Council the first time they applied. Beijing will blame the Government, and you can confidently predict that they will try to punish the UK in the event that their geopolitical ambition is frustrated by a merry band of Tower Hamlets residents and @ipacglobal 7⃣I won't set out all the other grounds here, but will underline that this case will be decided on planning merits alone. That means that geopolitical issues will barely feature. We are trying to establish that the Government acted unlawfully in approving the mega embassy. We had to excise our grounds which alleged that other matters had been taken into account in determining this application (clearly proven by Boris' letter below, IMO, but proving that in court would have entailed costly disclosure hearings). The Government has endless money to deploy, we don't. 8⃣ That said, with the help of superb dissident organisations and ordinary Brits, we managed to raise 215k, and I personally raised more to ensure we have enough to fight this case with the best counsel available. It's incredible to think of the thousands of hours of effort we and the residents have had to put in to defend the UK from this monstrous idea, which would be a disaster for UK national security, and project CCP power to the whole of Europe. I'll try to keep you posted from the courtroom, with the usual caveats surrounding restrictions.

‘This is not an Agatha Christie novel…’ Sir Iain Duncan Smith advises against any speculation when it comes to Ann Widdecombe’s murder. @tomswarbrick1

Andy Burnham pressing ahead with Starmer’s disastrous Chagos surrender tells us everything we need to know. Different Labour leader. Same weakness. Same terrible deal. Paying billions to give away strategically vital British territory is an act of national self-harm that benefits China and betrays our allies. Burnham must scrap it.

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New weight-loss medicines are changing what is possible. Britain cannot afford a benefits system that pays people to stay still. For too long, Britain has been drifting into a welfare crisis while ministers have buried difficult problems in review after review. Here we are again, with an official report this week spelling out what has been obvious to everyone since Covid: Britain’s health benefit system is out of control. telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2026/0… Britain cannot afford a benefits system that pays people to stay still. More importantly, the people trapped inside it cannot afford it either. Real compassion means helping people get better and get moving.

To mark Srebrenica Memorial Day 2026, I signed the Book of Remembrance in Westminster this week, honouring the memory of more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys murdered in the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995. We must never forget them. @srebrenicaUK #RememberingSrebrenica #Srebrenica31

'The only time she got personal was with one individual' Iain Duncan Smith commends Ann Widdecombe's political conviction.

Ann Widdecombe was a one-woman kebab stand: annoy her and you were skewered. No one felt her acerbic wit more keenly than our colleague Michael Howard when she said there was ‘something of the night’ about him. telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/1… These days, people don’t really speak their minds in politics too often. They try to square the difference on everything. But the public wants to know what we actually believe. Ann was certainly never afraid to tell them about her beliefs. Being an MP is not a career, it is a vocation. You have to accept that you may never be powerful. Does that make your life in politics a failure? No. Go and have a look at Ann, whom I admired enormously. So today I think back wistfully to her career both in politics and outside Westminster. Looking at our cohort of MPs today, I wonder: which of them is another Ann Widdecombe?