Stephanie Drabble

@DPJHodges Agreed. He is the only credible replacement right now

Whisper it. But Wes Streeting is doing a good job as Health Secretary, and Labour MPs are starting to notice. Was a narrative that his proximity to Mandelson had killed his leadership chances. I'm not so sure.

Britain is building a culture where people think they can do what they like and nothing will happen. All too often, they’re right. Crime, disorder and welfare dependency all point to the same problem: a country where rules exist, but no consequences follow. We must change this.

ANDREW NEIL: We’re being run by a bunch of know-nothing numpties — and the Labour Party should be renamed the Welfare Party mol.im/a/15708293

This is an excellent article and puts some common sense into this discussion. Despite the unpleasant presence of extremists-Muslim and other in our country, we have been pretty successful in creating a civic society that encompasses religious and cultural difference. We started that change in the 17th century when we had to come to terms with plurality of beliefs and the violent consequences of intolerance. It has been a long process but it is a priceless inheritance. It is noteworthy that the current strident demands from the far right for the forceful assertion of so called British 'Christian' values comes from persons who seem to have no idea what they actually are. Good neighbourliness, as practised by our King, in ensuring by his own actions that those British citizens of non Christian beliefs are treated as we would wish to be,when living peacefully and enjoying freedom under law, seems to drive them to particular fury. We should not be surprised. Nazi Germany encountered the same problem when it set out to highjack Christianity to its agenda of extreme nationalism and racism and found that many decent Christians resisted which is why it ended promoting a concocted Germanic Aryan cult. We should not allow this attack on the real Christian values, that have helped make our country a good place for the vast majority of us of all faiths and none to succeed.

JUST IN: You do not fire your Army Chief of Staff in the middle of a war for no reason. You fire him because of what comes next. Pete Hegseth called General Randy George on April 2 and told him to retire immediately. The Pentagon confirmed it within hours. No reason was given. Not publicly. Not privately. A senior Army official told Fox News that Hegseth offered George nothing: no misconduct, no operational failure, no policy disagreement on the record. Just a phone call and a career ending in the middle of the most significant American combat operation in two decades. George is the 24th general or admiral Hegseth has removed. But he is not the 24th. He is the one that matters. The Army Chief of Staff. The man whose signature sits between a president’s intent and the order that sends soldiers across a beach or into a tunnel complex. The 82nd Airborne is deploying right now. Marines from the 31st MEU are staged on the USS Tripoli. JSOC operators are at forward bases in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Kharg Island, 90 percent of Iranian oil exports, sits 16 kilometres off a coast that someone will have to decide whether to approach. And the four-star general whose job it was to advise whether that approach should happen was removed 48 hours after Trump told the nation the war would continue for two to three more weeks. The replacement is Vice Chief General Christopher LaNeve. He was Hegseth’s senior military aide before this appointment. The man who carried the Secretary’s briefcase now commands the Army the Secretary is reshaping. The chain of command did not break. It shortened. The distance between a television studio and a combat order just collapsed to zero intermediaries who were not personally selected by the man giving the order. No reason was given. That is the tell. When someone is removed without explanation during a crisis, the explanation is the crisis itself. George either objected to something or was about to. The ground option. The power plant strikes. The Kharg raid. The escalation that turned a highway bridge in Karaj into rubble on the same day he was told to leave. Something in the next two weeks requires a chief who will not push back, and the Pentagon solved that problem by installing one trained as Hegseth’s aide. A former Fox News weekend host just fired a four-star general with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, replaced him with his own former assistant, and did it during a live war in which the next decision could put American soldiers on Iranian soil for the first time in history. No hearing was held. No misconduct cited. The Army woke up on April 3 with a new chief it did not choose, in a war it did not start, preparing for a phase the previous chief apparently could not be trusted to execute. The question is not why George was fired. Every general in the building knows why. The question is what order is coming in the next fourteen days that required removing the one man in the chain of command who might have said no. The war has no perimeter. The chain of command has no objectors. And the next phase has no one left to stop it. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

Note to the Lancashire CCC Membership.

🚨A risk: Escalation ➡️Miscalculation➡️World War With conflict in the Middle East & Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it reminded me of a warning made back in 2020 by General Sir Nick Carter, when he was head of the UK military, about the risk of escalation leading to miscalculation and the next world war: "I think the real risk we have, with quite a lot of regional conflicts that are going on at the moment, is you could see escalation lead to miscalculation and that is a thing I think we have to guard against," General Carter said. Explaining what he meant by miscalculation, the military chief said: "The protagonists, either because they don't realise the implications of their actions, lead to an escalation, which means that more people perhaps get involved, more weaponry gets involved and before you can contain it, it leads the sides ending up in a full-blown war. "We have to remember history might not repeat itself but it has a rhythm and if you look back at the last century, before both world wars, I think it was unarguable that there was escalation that led to the miscalculation which ultimately led to war at a scale we would hopefully never see again." Here is the full piece in case of interest: news.sky.com/story/risk-of-…

Where is @GuyJohnsonTV on the #TheOpeningTrade? @BloombergTV @business

You want the NATO allies to join you in a war you started without ever consulting these allies about the war or explaining your war aims. We’re meant just to meekly fall in line. You recently supported a US invasion of a NATO ally (Denmark/Greenland) but now you want these same allies to join your war. Your president disparaged and misrepresented the role of NATO allies in Afghanistan. But now you want them to join with you again in a war of your making. You went to war with Iran without a thought of how to keep the Strait of Hormuz open and without involving your allies in the matter. But now you want the NATO allies to bail you out, even though there’s still no plan for Hormuz. You want the NATO allies to join you in a war in which you still cannot articulate the endgame. Or what victory would look like. You went to war thinking the Iranian regime would quickly topple, that Tehran would not attack the Gulf States or close Hormuz. Why would we align with such Epic Stupidity? You and other know-nothing blowhards started this war all on your own. You can finish it on your own. If you’re able to …

@ChrisJohnsonsba @JoeOldfiel13519 @itvfootball Not sure how you can assess whether I am United fan when you have no clue who I am. And for your information, I am a United fan.

Man Utd fans... Would you give Michael Carrick the manager job at Old Trafford? 🤔 Yes or no? ⬇️

@JoeOldfiel13519 @itvfootball The question was yes or no. So I answered with yes or no. Simple really

@SDrabble @itvfootball As simple as that yeah ,any reasoning behind that

So you price young people out of the labour market with huge rises in the minimum wage and national insurance. Then you subsidise employers to employ young people. Government is brilliant. Simply brilliant.

@bbctms Just awful. Just dont understand how its still going

The Hundred auctions are complete and these are the squads as things stand! 🏏 Who’s done the best business?

For those of you interested in jury trials, this is Parliament at its best. 👇

No 10 seems to be denying something I didn't write, that Starmer wanted Trump to have the bases for its initial raids. But the PM wanted to get to the position we are in now (where they could be used to hit the missile sites in self defence), and reached on Sunday evening, on Friday evening. I have multiple sources for this. Here's the timeline: 1) Feb 11 - US requests the use of Diego Garcia and RAF Fairford for offensive strikes on Iran 2) Hermer says this would be a breach of international law and Britain cannot facilitate let alone participate. No one in the system seems to have seriously challenged this 3) Trump and Starmer have a series of 'angry' conversations 4) At the NSC on Friday the likely implications were discussed which included Iranian retaliatory raids on allies, as happened last June. 5) Starmer suggested we should let the Americans use the bases for 'defensive' strikes at the missile sites. Healey backed him. 6) This was opposed by Reeves, Cooper, Mahmood and, most aggressively, Miliband. Cooper's argument was that nuclear talks in Oman were making progress. She, Reeves and Mahmood seem to have wanted to wait until retaliatory attacks were happening before the basing request was granted. 7) Attacks begin 0630 Saturday morning 8) Meanwhile the chief of the defence staff, Air Marshal Sir Richard Knighton was in touch with the US joint chiefs and Healey had a series of calls with Pete Hegseth. Knighton's message was (paraphrasing) 'if you frame your formal request this way it ought to be granted once things get going'. 9) Saturday: The US makes its formal ask for the bases to target the missile sites (effectiveky drafted by the MoD) 10) Sunday afternoon: The NSC approves the request and the US begins flying missions from Diego Garcia The interesting things here are: i) Hermer's legal advice WAS central to govt thinking, but Starmer still wanted to get ahead of the game and do more to support the US and he was not strong enough or determined enough to persuade his inner cabinet ii) Just as the PM now struggles to get anything the PLP dislikes through parliament, I can't think of another PM in matters of war or peace who couldn't get what they wanted through cabinet iii) Dislike of Trump seems to have motivated Miliband in particular and the PLP seems delighted, but the procrastination and failure even to match the rhetoric of Canada, Australia has badly damaged the UK with Gulf allies and Cyprus. This ought to matter to Labour MPs who always want a multilateral solution iv) The UK had 16 days from Feb 11th to prepare knowing that attacks on Iran were likely. Some kit, interceptors etc, was sent to the region but the first Type 45 destroyer will not even leave until next week READ THE WHOLE THING HERE spectator.com/article/whose-…

Truly a privilege to go again. With Adare Manor hosting and the 100th Anniversary of the Ryder Cup, it is going to be a very special week Let’s go! 🇪🇺🇮🇪

My monologue from today’s The Times at One with Andrew Neil @TimesRadio What’s worse? To be an embarrassment? Or an irrelevance? Well, what’s worse is to be both. How do I know? Because that’s what Britain is under Keir Starmer’s tender care as the most significant geopolitical events of recent times unfold in the Middle East.  An embarrassment and an irrelevance.  It’s what happens when you allow foreign and defence policy to be dictated by lawyers who came to prominence and riches on the international law circuit and who show little concern for the national interest.  Starmer’s default position is to do what they decree.    So, when the US/Israeli attacks on Iran began Saturday morning our PM was at pains to stress Britain was not in anyway part of the military action.  Not only that — though this he was not so keen to spell it out — he’d forbidden our most important ally from using UK bases for the assault.  He was at one, he said, with Donald Trump’s desire to stop the tyrants of Tehran from developing a nuclear bomb. He just didn’t will the means to stop it.  Was he for or against America’s latest exercise in regime change? He didn’t say.  Nor would his defence secretary. He drew the short straw and was sent into bat in the Sunday morning media round.  In a series of excruciating changes, including on this station, from which his reputation will not recover, John Healey refused to say, again and again, if the British government supported the attacks on Iran. Foreign secretary Yvette Cooper went thru the same farce this morning.  Well, it’s only the signal military action of our time. Why would you have an opinion? As Healey prevaricated, Iran had started to retaliate by attacking almost every Gulf State, most of them our allies as well as America’s.  Suddenly it triggered in Starmer’s brain that sitting on the fence was perhaps not the best option. Especially when it looked as if the Iranians were targeting our base in Cyprus too.  So the lawyers were consulted again, naturally. And, autocue re-scripted at their direction, Starmer appeared again at the prime ministerial podium to say the US could use our bases after all — provided it was only for defensive purposes.  Those of us without the benefit of a legal education and years of experience on the well-remunerated international law circuit are struggling to see the distinction.  The US and Israel were already pummelling Iranian missile sites because they were a threat to their allies in the region. Britain did not support that.  Now Britain has decided it’s OK to pummel them from our bases. Though we won’t be doing any pummelling ourselves. And we’re still not saying if we’re in favour of the pummelling.   Canada and Australia, both with centre-left governments, have backed US military action. Britain has not. But it hasn’t condemned it either. Colour me confused.  None of this is to argue for British support or British participation. I understand why we should be wary. But it is to argue we should know where our government stands. Yet we don’t. Hence the embarrassment and the irrelevance.  1/2

Let’s not forget that as Donald Trump passes judgement on the head of State of Iran there is another one, in the Kremlin, whose signature started the invasion of Ukraine and has left hundreds of thousands of people dead. If the US is not to be seen as hypocritical in its claim that it is re-asserting moral authority then the White House should take a much harder line on Russia.

@CharlesDagnall Yep I suffered the same in Jan. The new system being implemented in the weirdest way which makes it so long. If you arrive at the same time as another plane from outside the EU, you are done for!

For anyone travelling to Krakow in future… handy travel tip is be prepared to wait at Border Control for a loooooooooooooooong time. Been in it an hour and not even halfway there with the queues.