simon shadbolt

@RichardTomo5 Worth looking at why civil service has grown. Here are a few *increase in specialist data roles and new technology. 116% growth since 2016. *Brexit ( extra border staff, import/export staff. *Covid *increase population. More police, prison staff, immigration staff, NHS, etc

In the 1980s, Britain had over 300,000 frontline troops. Today? Around 185,000. Meanwhile, the civil service has ballooned to over 500,000. We now have nearly 3x more bureaucrats than frontline soldiers. That’s not a serious country. That’s a state wildly out of balance.

@piersmorgan In March 2026 testimony, Gabbard stated that Iran had made "no efforts" to rebuild its nuclear enrichment capabilities following U.S.-Israel strikes in June 2025.

We were assured we had a no-nuke Iran after the 12-day war last summer.. so forgive me if I’m a bit reticent to believe we have one again now.

@Peston Blair is a better and more recent example of creating commercial advantage. £40bn defence deal with KSA in one year for example

2/2 But in this dangerous world, a medium size nation like the UK needs as much goodwill as it can muster in the international community. In the coming days I will try to gauge whether the leaders in this region are simply going through the motions in seeing Starmer or whether he can recreate some of the warmth - and significant commercial advantage - that was generated and enjoyed by Thatcher.

Hours after President Trump announced a two-week cessation of hostilities against Iran, I travelled to the Gulf with the prime minister and his team, in the official government plane. We have just landed in Saudi Arabia. For diplomatic and security reasons, I have been asked not to disclose our itinerary or Starmer’s schedule of meetings with government heads. But it does not take enormous intellectual effort to deduce that the first set of talks will be with arguably the most powerful of the Gulf leaders, Saudi’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. The most pressing question in all Starmer’s meetings, including with MBS, is whether the ceasefire between Iran and America and Israel can endure long enough for there to be meaningful talks on a sustainable peace - which are scheduled to start on Friday in Pakistan. According to British sources - and frankly this won’t surprise you - the ceasefire is real, holding so far and very unstable. One source of anxiety is Israel’s somewhat ambivalent commitment to it - and notably that Netanyahu is explicit the hiatus does not restrict the Israel Defence Forces’ aggression in Lebanon. Another is that the devolved structure of Iran’s military, the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the absence of a centralised power structure in Iran brings the risk of continued sporadic and unlicensed attacks by Iranian militia on Gulf countries - and also means that very few shippers of oil, gas and other vital commodities will yet take the risk of moving their tankers and ships through the precarious Strait of Hormuz. As one intelligence source put it to me, Israel’s assassination of so many Iranian leaders makes it incredibly difficult to know who is in charge in the country, if anyone. On the more positive side though, there may be a little more underlying common ground between Tehran and Washington than their public positions on their “non negotiable” aims for any peace settlement would suggest - though I don’t have a clue how their respective positions on Iran’s nuclear ambitions or Iran’s determination to be turnpike keeper of the Hormuz Strait can be bridged. Because the Hormuz Strait is the supply route for a fifth of the world’s carbon energy, and therefore a kind of oesophagus for the global economy, much of Starmer’s focus in talks with Gulf leaders will be a continuation of British diplomatic activity with 40-odd other nations in recent days, namely whether there is any practical way to make the Strait safe for commercial traffic. But his other message is bound to be along the lines of “when this chaos is finally over, don’t forget who your true allies and friends are.” The point is that - like Starmer - none of the Gulf states wanted Trump to attack Iran when he did. And although the UK’s military has been exposed by both the Ukraine and Iran conflicts as depleted and unequipped for this era of drone wars, the UK has been deploying planes and weapons to protect the region from Iran’s assorted uncrewed aerial threats. In the eyes of Gulf leaders, the UK - and Europe more widely, including Ukraine with its formidable drone capabilities - presumably looks a less intimidating friend than either America or China. They have a material interest in strengthening ties with Britain. This is important because Trump’s Iran war is re-configuring the global balance of power in a fundamental way. For Starmer and the UK there are risks, especially if the US were to precipitously withdraw its military umbrella from our continent. And to be clear, there is no sign of Starmer unilaterally abandoning the UK’s historic entente with America, even if Trump is an unreliable, and sometimes abusive, friend. 1/2

@ColinBrazierTV @BeaverWestminst Colin, it was only the IDF that claimed Iran could strike UK. I have not seen any evidence that Iran can strike UK now. Certainly no shower. Iran does not have the tech systems required to effectively manage and deploy warheads and LR missiles. They may/could in future.

Media coverage of the U.S./Iranian ceasefire consistently ignores the most important question Britain must answer. The conflict showed us Iran has the means to shower us with ballistic missiles, potentially tipped with nuclear warheads. Where is our plan for a missile shield?

Trump: “We received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate.” Trump (and I guess the world) are benefiting from the complete dereliction of the media to have reported on this ten point plan. It is weeks old. But I am fine letting Trump pretend it’s brand new and he forced it out of them.

@BBCWorld @awzurcher Can you explain the “win” bit, as I must have missed it. Also this Iranian 10 Point Ceasefire Plan has been around for weeks. Pressure seems to have been on Trump rather than the Iranians.

Iran ceasefire deal a temporary win for Trump - but it comes at a cost bbc.in/41Yw0K9

Referencing 7 October 2023, former UK prime minister Tony Blair wonders how Britons would react “if we woke up one day and between the hours of 6am and midday, 1,200 of our citizens were murdered, including young people at a music festival, with women raped and others taken hostage”. Set aside again the Israeli disinformation – no tangible evidence has ever been produced of any rapes taking place on 7 October – and instead ask a more pertinent question, one Blair desperately wants to distract us from. How would Britons respond if they woke up every day for eight decades to find they were losing more of their homeland – and their homes – to colonising immigrants claiming a right to take their lands based on a supposed 3,000-year-old birthright? How would Britons react if many hundreds of thousands of them were given lengthy prison terms, often following torture, by kangaroo military courts set up by those same colonisers with near 100 per cent conviction rates? How would Britons feel about foreign settler militias being allowed, again for decades, to regularly rampage through their towns and villages, setting fire to their homes and cars, pointing guns at them, sometimes shooting at their family members – all watched over by paramilitary forces that not only refused to intervene to protect them but often joined in the attacks? Blair observes of the likely response of Britons: “I suspect it would be total determination that those responsible were going to be removed as a threat, and nothing would deter us from doing so.” And yet here is Blair writing a column in the Sunday Times condemning a British left that agrees with him. They believe the threat to Palestinians posed by Israel’s criminal settlers, by Israel’s criminal army, by Israel’s criminal government needs to be removed with “total determination”. The difference is that Blair is indifferent to Palestinian suffering because, in a long tradition of racists, he regards them as lesser humans. He cares only when Israelis suffer a reaction to their state’s systematic abuses of the Palestinians. This is an extract from my article Blair’s latest deceit-riddled column vilifies the UK left to justify genocide. Find a link to the rest of the article in the reply post ⬇️

@JonLemire There is a lot of sugar coating here. The view of the talks in Geneva runs counter to Oman’s and int observers. I struggled to find examples of Trump “take on unfathomable risks and somehow come out on top”. Any clue? And little talks of endstate or grand strategic objectives.

“When Mr. Trump joined the meeting, Mr. Ratcliffe briefed him on the assessment. The C.I.A. director used one word to describe the Israeli prime minister’s regime change scenarios: ‘farcical.’” nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/…

@AlisonEBond @BBCr4today @hzeffman “Deteriorated completely?” •Starmer's personal approval rating increased by 26 points when voters were reminded of his disagreement with Donald Trump over the Iran war. •A JL Partners survey for The Independent found his overall negative rating improved from -40 to - 14.

@BBCr4today @hzeffman Even more than that, Starmer's relationship with the electorate has deteriorated completely. All his running off to the Middle East for photo opps won't save him or his future reputation

"Over the six weeks or so of this conflict... Keir Starmer's personal relationship with Donald Trump has deteriorated significantly." Chief Political Correspondent @hzeffman shares analysis of the state of the UK's relationship with the US and countries in the Gulf.

@Microinteracti1 @guse_guse And this 10 Point Iranian Ceasefire plan is not new. I understand that Iran has proposed it for weeks.

So here are Iran’s peace terms, published in the Wall Street Journal. Non-aggression guarantee. Control of the Strait. Uranium enrichment rights. All sanctions lifted. UN resolutions scrapped. IAEA resolutions scrapped. Compensation payments for war damage. US forces out of the region. And a ceasefire covering Israel and Hezbollah as a bonus. Iran entered this war with none of that. Iran is leaving with all of it. Meanwhile the United States got a two-week trial of a strait that was already open. Masterclass, they said. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

@AKDay89 Fabulous satire Andrew!

The Strait of Hormuz was closed for 47 years by the Mad Mullahs of Iran. But tonight, Donald Trump opened it.

This is nuts, Trump really did do exactly what Ryan Grim suggested he do hours earlier: pretend Iran's ten-point plan is a new proposal, counting on the fact that the media hasn't been reporting on Iran's demands to make it look like a new offer Tehran put forward in desperation.

The World need to see this. Over 𝟏𝟎,𝟎𝟎𝟎 𝐉𝐞𝐰𝐬 attended this event where Satmar Grand Rabbi Aron Teitelbaum declared: “We have no part in Zionism. We have no part in the State of Israel. We will continue to oppose Zionism in the name of our faith.” A reminder that Judaism and Zionism are not the same.

JD Vance, standing next to Orban, criticises the EU for interfering in elections. Irony is dead.

JD Vance: "Will you stand against the bureaucrats in Brussels? Will you stand for western civilization? Will you stand for freedom, truth, and the God of our fathers? Then, my friends, go to the polls and stand for Viktor Orban!"

I’d sit this one out @George_Osborne Britain can’t fight a war at the moment, largely due to decisions you made re. funding, cancelling projects and putting the Treasury in the driving seat in working out the defence budget, before which it was threat not Treasury orientated.

Members of the Iranian Jewish community inspect what is left of their synagogue in Tehran after Israel bombed it. On Passover...

@DrChrisParry @BenWallace70 Any reason Ben?

So why didn't Ben do anything about it when he was in power? Pretty negligent.

On D-Day, 6 June 1944, there were five invasion beaches. 2 US, 2 British and one Canadian. The bulk of the supporting naval forces were not US ( as the USN was busy elsewhere in the Pacific). The air support to D-Day was spread across a large number of US, British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand Polish, Czech, Free French, etc aircraft. Your comment is both historically ignorant and rude.

Not true. The allies undertook the Normandy Landings to liberate Europe from Nazi Germany. You didn’t do it for the British. The British had already ended German dreams of invading the British Isles by winning the “Battle of Britain” before US joined the war. Furthermore… about 83,115 British and Canadian troops landed on D-Day, compared to 73,000 Americans. The British also provided the majority of the naval ships - 892 ships out of 1,213 - and landing craft - 3,261 out of 4,126. We have always regarded the USA as friends and allies, and massively appreciate your assistance in securing Europe over many decades, but please do not insult us, or demean yourself, by exaggerating your contribution and ignoring our own.