TC

@Neccccy Full-on leave, no-brainer.

If there was a new Brexit vote tomorrow, how would you vote? Stay or leave?

I absolutely love @sharrond62 and @jk_rowling for their hard work making women feel safe from men pretending to be women and fighting for women’s rights Do you agree? #WomensRights

Do you agree with @sharrond62 and @jk_rowling that transgender women should stay OUT of women’s sports MEN ARE MEN!! WOMEN ARE WOMEN!!

In 1998, Abu Hamza sent a group of terrorists (including his son) to blow up the British consulate in Yemen. They were caught. During their trial, others amongst Hamza’s thugs kidnapped foreigners in an attempt to bargain for their release. Hamza was eventually convicted in the USA of, inter alia, ordering that kidnapping - during which four of the hostages (including three Brits) were killed. Separately, amongst the gang convicted of the attempt to blow up the consulate alongside Hamza’s son was Shahid Butt. Shahid Butt is now a candidate for council in Birmingham Sparkhill in May’s local elections. This is where our suicidal empathy brings us. Someone convicted of explicitly targeting this country’s diplomatic mission for destruction is a political candidate in… this country, today.

Ambition Before Duty. The Minister Who Put Her Career Ahead of the Law. Next Wednesday marks one year since the Supreme Court ruled, unanimously and without ambiguity, that sex under the Equality Act means biological sex. One year since the law was settled. One year since the Equality and Human Rights Commission drafted its code of practice setting out what that ruling requires of hospitals, schools, gyms and public bodies. One year since Bridget Phillipson received that code and chose to sit on it. What has changed in twelve months is not the law. The judgment stands. The code is ready. What has changed is the credibility of the minister charged with implementing it. Baroness Falkner, who led the EHRC until November and oversaw the drafting of that code, has now said plainly what many had suspected: Phillipson is withholding guidance not because it requires further work, but because publishing it would cost her politically. The activist MPs whose votes she needs for promotion would not forgive her. So women wait, and the minister keeps her powder dry (Martin, 2026). That is a specific accusation, made by a specific person with direct knowledge of the process. It is not a political opponent guessing at motive. Falkner submitted the code. She watched it stall. She knows what ready looks like, and she knows the guidance is ready. Her conclusion, that personal ambition is the operative factor, carries weight that no government spokesman can easily dismiss. The Labour response, that Falkner had demeaned the office she once held, did not address the substance. It attacked the witness. Which leaves the charge unanswered. Consider what the title Secretary of State for Women and Equalities actually represents. Not a departmental portfolio in the ordinary sense, but a stated commitment, a promise woven into the office itself. To hold that title while deliberately withholding the legal protections owed to the women you nominally represent is a contradiction so stark it requires no elaboration. The office makes the accusation. Falkner supplies the motive. The anniversary provides the measure. Falkner went further still, and her wider observation deserves to be heard. She drew a parallel with the grooming gangs scandal, noting that this government has a pattern of institutional inaction driven by fear of upsetting particular constituencies. The comparison is uncomfortable precisely because it is not new. The structure is familiar: a known problem, a clear remedy, a minister unwilling to act because the political cost of action outweighs, in their private calculation, the human cost of delay. Those doing the waiting are never the ministers. Starmer's position is untenable on its own terms. He told Parliament the ruling must be implemented in full. His minister is arguing for a case-by-case approach that restores the incoherence the court rejected. He is a lawyer. He knows what a unanimous Supreme Court judgment means. He also knows what his backbenchers want. The gap between those two things is where women's rights currently reside. The government's rebuttal speaks of sober leadership and treating everyone with dignity. Fine words. But dignity is not delivered by a code of practice that lives in a ministerial drawer. Protection is not real if it exists only in statute while the guidance that would make it operational is suppressed for career reasons. The court has done its work. The EHRC has done its work. One minister has not done hers. "Phillipson is withholding guidance not because it requires further work, but because publishing it would cost her politically."

@JChimirie66677 @AnthonyGri10669 Surely if the agreement is not ratified by parliament then end of story and Mauritius have no right to claim recompense.

Anthony, as absurd as it sounds, that is the logical end point of the position they have taken. Once you build your entire foreign policy on the idea that non-binding international opinions create real obligations, you create a trap for yourself. You stop negotiating as a sovereign state and start behaving like a party under instruction. That mindset doesn't switch on and off depending on convenience. It carries through. If the government has already accepted, in principle, that Britain was under a duty to transfer sovereignty, then the financial component does not sit neatly separate from that duty. It becomes part of the same legal and moral framework they have constructed. That is the danger. You move from "we chose to agree terms" to "we are obliged to honour them," even when the agreement itself is collapsing. And look at where that leads. A deal that cannot be ratified. A treaty that cannot be implemented without American consent. A domestic court ruling cutting across the government's position. Yet the financial commitment still hanging in the air because ministers have spent months arguing that compliance is not optional. That's the real cost of Hermer's approach. It shifts Britain from a country that decides, to a country that justifies. From one that negotiates outcomes, to one that explains why it must accept them. Follow that logic through and you end up exactly where you are pointing. A deal that is dead, but the payment lives on. That's not just absurd. It's indefensible.

Hermer's Law: How a Non-Binding Opinion Became a £30 Billion Surrender The Chagos bill is dead. Not delayed, not paused, not pending resolution of a diplomatic disagreement with Washington. Dead. The government has run out of parliamentary time, lost American support, lost a domestic court ruling, and is now appealing against a judgment that grants the very people it claimed to be helping the right to return to their homeland. The deal Keir Starmer signed, the bill his ministers championed, and the legal reasoning Lord Hermer placed at the heart of Labour's foreign policy have together produced a comprehensive and entirely avoidable disaster. Begin with the legal foundation, because that is where the rot starts. The government's case for surrendering Chagos rested on a 2019 advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice. Not a binding ruling. An opinion. One that carries, in the Spectator's precise formulation, roughly the legal force of a politely worded email. Any government confident in its own sovereignty would have noted the opinion, acknowledged its non-binding status, and proceeded as before. Instead, Lord Hermer, as Attorney General, treated it as an obligation Britain had no realistic choice but to honour. International law was placed at the heart of Labour's foreign policy, and a non-binding advisory opinion became the justification for surrendering a strategic asset Britain has held for two centuries. The consequences were predictable and have duly arrived. The legal framework constructed to make surrender seem inevitable has since been turned against the deal itself. A domestic court ruled earlier this year that Chagossians expelled from their homeland have a right of abode. The government is now appealing against that judgment, deploying British courts to resist the rights of the people whose welfare the deal was ostensibly designed to protect. The legal reasoning that was supposed to close the argument has reopened every argument simultaneously. Then there is Trump. His final withdrawal of support came after Starmer refused to allow American aircraft to use British bases to strike Iran. The refusal was consistent with this government's broader posture: cautious, legally constrained, reluctant to act without multilateral cover. But the consequence was the loss of American backing for a deal that required American cooperation to implement. Britain had already committed £30 billion of public money. It had signed. It had staked its diplomatic credibility. And then, when the alliance was tested at the precise moment it mattered, the terms of British foreign policy prevented Britain from meeting the condition on which everything else depended. The geometry of this failure is worth stating plainly. Starmer signed a deal he could not implement without US consent. He then adopted a foreign policy posture that made US consent impossible to retain. He built his legal case on a non-binding opinion that has since generated binding domestic consequences he is now fighting in court. And he committed billions of public money to an agreement that cannot be ratified, to lease back a base Britain already owned, from a government it was paying to take it. Lord Hermer bears particular responsibility. The decision to treat the ICJ opinion as effectively binding, to frame sovereignty as a liability and legal compliance as a virtue, set the terms for everything that followed. A government that begins by conceding the argument rarely wins the negotiation. Britain conceded Chagos in principle before a single formal demand had been made, and has spent the years since discovering the price of that concession while failing to collect any of its promised benefits. The bill is dead. The deal is stranded. The base remains, for now, in British hands. That is not a vindication of the strategy. It is a verdict on it.

@magafan1776 Obviously a soup dragon.

🚨HOLY SMOKES! Could this be aliens on the moon? Artemis II crew has reportedly observed a mysterious object moving across the lunar surface during their historic flyby this week.

@lisakeb007 If it's supposed to be satire, then bear in mind that the kind of person you're apparently portraying actually exists so how are we supposed to tell whether you're one of those or not? You might like to think about appending your satirical postings with /sarc or a similar flag

I have a good degree in trans gender studies, I have lived experience from my gap year, I have worked for 5 YEARS for a LGBTQ2XYZ charity and I STILL can't afford a house in central London. My Granny has a 4 bed place, right by a tube stop. She doesn't NEED all that space since my Grandad died last year. Why can't she just sell it and help me out? After all, I AM paying for her pension

@Amockx2022 But it's not true is it? He definitely does not focus on the interests of the indigenous white population.

@ret_ward @TiceRichard As usual, Ward talks absolute garbage.

I am afraid @TiceRichard is wrong. More North Sea drilling would make global net zero more difficult and would therefore make the U.K. less safe.

Outrageous - outrageously good!

@DavidVidecette Who voted these absolute muppets in? Trouble is they've now established significant support amongst those in receipt of the benefits the rest of us are paying for.

Honestly, I’ve seen my country in bad times, and lived through them. But I have never experienced decline, surrender and stupidity presided over by a government of the United Kingdom on the scale we currently see. It’s truly unprecedented in my lifetime

Quite frankly I think this lady deserves a blooming medal for all the rubbish she’s had to put up with by the looney left!

This is idiotic 1. "Clean energy" aka renewables is primarily for electricity 2. Electricity is less than 20% of UK energy consumption 3. Based on the government's plan to electrify heating it will take 47 years and we're well below the target installation rate 4. Therefore we're going to need oil and gas for decades 5. Our own production is both cheaper and cleaner than imports 6. And renewables are the most expensive form of generation so the "cheaper proven solutions" comment is just plain wrong

Self-appointed Defender of the Faiths. That tells us everything we need to know - he clearly doesn't want to exclude Islam. Having given a Ramadan message, he is obligated to give an Easter message.

🚨BREAKING: British citizens are calling upon King Charles to ABDICATE amid huge backlash following the announcement that he will not be giving an Easter message this year. Should Charles hand over the throne?

Starmer and this government are useless We have the highest tax burden since the 1940s Since the General Election Inflation is up Unemployment is up Youth unemployment is massively up Business closures up Deindustrialisation up Energy bills up even before Iran and after moving a chunk of subsidy costs to taxation NHS waiting lists higher Educational outcomes lower Speech being restricted And they tried to cancel elections Worst government ever

@agw1437 @CatharineHoey @JaneLockwood18 @RoyalFamily As he has chosen to issue a Ramadan statement, he now has an obligation to issue an Easter message. Failure to do so, gives credence to the rumour that he has converted to Islam. If that is the case, parliament must insist that he abdicate.

@CatharineHoey @JaneLockwood18 @RoyalFamily You should know better than this !!! The late Queen gave only ONE Easter message and that was in Covid. The King attended the Maundy Thursday service and will attend as ever at Easter. Let’s home all Reform voters and other whingers get off to church this Easter too..

Is it true that the King is not delivering a message for Easter. ? If this is true why is he not ? We need to have a reason. If he can give messages to Muslims on their special religious days surely he must send a message to Christians. @RoyalFamily

This is the point. KC3 issued a Ramadan statement. That obligates him to issue an Easter message. If he is not prepared to accept that obligation, he should abdicate.

It’s not “history”, Shabana. I’m from Telford. I was groomed and abused by different men from the age of 5. I’ve seen countless little girls victimised by Pakistani-Muslim grooming gangs in my hometown. IT’S STILL GOING ON. I went on national TV to say that little girls are still being raped and tortured by Pakistani-Muslim gangs. The next day, the police came banging on my door to threaten me into silence for speaking out. Growing up, we knew which takeaways were dodgy, which taxi companies were controlled by the Pakistani-Muslim gangs, which estates and high streets not to walk through alone or avoid altogether. It’s an open secret. And your government is complicit. It is still happening in towns and cities across the UK. Little girls are being subjected to the worst abuse imaginable, at the hands of men who know they can get away with it. Nothing has changed. You are still turning a blind eye despite decades of undeniable evidence. Politicians like you are trying to sweep the scandal under the carpet, sabotaging the National Inquiry at every turn so that they can save their own skins. And little girls are still being sacrificed at the altar of multiculturalism and traded for votes. Decades later. The same old story. You may not have shoved little girls into taxis or plied them with vapes himself, but you and your entire government are just as guilty as if you had. And I, for one, refuse to be silenced or placated by the very people who have spent decades discrediting victims and survivors like me.