Adam

Teachers’ voting intentions. Explains a lot.

A farmer dies in April 2026. His son inherits the farm. The farm has been in the family since 1847. The farm consists of: 300 acres of grazing pasture, a farmhouse built in 1892, a barn, a milking parlour, two tractors of varying ages, a Land Rover that runs about 70% of the time, and a herd of 180 Hereford-cross cattle. On paper, the farm is worth approximately £3.2 million. This is because land near him has been bought recently by a London hedge fund looking for carbon credits, which has dragged the comparable value of every field within forty miles upward to a number nobody local can justify. In cash, the farm produces a profit of about £28,000 a year in a good year. In a bad year it loses money. The son also works as a fencing contractor three days a week to keep the operation viable. The inheritance tax bill on a £3.2 million estate, even at the reduced 20% rate, comes to approximately £140,000 after the increased threshold is applied. The son does not have £140,000. The son has never had £140,000. The son has £4,200 in his current account and an overdraft. The son sells 60 acres to a developer to pay the tax. The developer puts solar panels on the 60 acres. The remaining herd cannot be sustained on the reduced land. The herd is sold. The barn becomes a holiday let. A different family eats Brazilian beef this Christmas without knowing why the price went up. The Treasury collects £140,000. The land never produces British food again.

This week Sadiq Khan blocked the Met Police from buying software it says it needs to modernise and fight crime. The software is made by Palantir. The Met’s response is unusually direct. Read in full:

🚨🇬🇧 Andy Burnham’s Greater Manchester authority funnelled hundreds of millions in public loans to developer Renaker. They built luxury skyscrapers packed with penthouses. Barely any affordable homes delivered. The tycoon takes £40m+ dividends and relocates to Monaco. This is champagne socialism in action. Public cash for private luxury under Burnham. Andy Burnham has serious questions to answer. @KarenQuinn1973 #AndyBurnham #Manchester #HousingScandal #TaxpayerCash

The UK borrowed another £24.3 billion in April, above the £20.9 billion forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility.  The ONS said the debt interest bill rose to £10.3 billion last month – the highest on record for April, which marks the start of the new financial year. The government is paying more than £100 billion a year to service its debts. Yet a cacophony of Labour and Green pols think we should borrow even more.

Andy Burnham now now says: 1. I will stick to Rachael Reeves’ fiscal rules. 2. I will not seek to rejoin the EU. Two U-turns in one day. What exactly would he do differently?

If Burnham wins, he’ll treat it as a mandate to do whatever terrible leftist policies he wants (nationwide rent controls, wealth tax, exit tax, ultra-high CGT). This could be quite bad. If he loses, Rayner or Miliband will become PM instead as obvious second-best choices, wounded and weak from day one and with no claim to a mandate. They are also clearly less electorally appealling. Reform winning in Makerfield therefore seems very desireable, and a lot of economic growth may be at stake.

@JeevunSandher What are you talking about? You’ve increased spending on welfare by >£17bn, pensioners by >£25bn, and public sector wages by >£10bn. You’ve already raised taxes on work and investment to pay for all this. You are delusional if you don’t think this is hurting economic growth.

I like to rewatch this regularly. The circus long predicted by @SteveBakerFRSA is in full swing. I think an IMF bail-out is now on the cards in the near future. I used to lend ~$10m to the UK govt, but I don’t anymore despite the attractive yields…

“You *are* modern politics. You went to Cambridge University and worked in a couple of think tanks. You became a Special Adviser. And now you want to become PM. What *more* insider beltway Westminster politician could there be??!” 2015

"No, I don't subscribe to this 'kindness' - I'll tell the truth instead." I spoke at the Cambridge Union last night about LGBs, children's safety and women's rights. Full video here:

Trevor Phillips attended the previous 'Unite the Kingdom' rally. Keir Starmer ought to have watched this video before releasing his own.

BRAZIER'S BACK! @ColinBrazierTV is back with a NEW SHOW every Friday, analysing the state of Britain 🇬🇧and the world. Exclusive to Outpost.

"The Prime Minister is going, no Prime Minister can survive this... It's time to be real, he's going. No doubt about it." Labour MP Jonathan Hinder describes Sir Keir Starmer's speech this morning speech as "tone deaf" and "at its worst, downright insulting". #Newsnight

Lets send this even higher. That'll definitely work

This guy is here on a temporary three year student visa. He just won a 5 year term in the Scottish Parliament. He is currently crowdfunding for another temporary visa Mental. Absolutely mental

There is a myth, very widely held in Labour, that we achieved an huge popular victory in 2024 under Starmer. In fact we won 9.7 million votes, over 3 million fewer than in 2017 and half a million less than the 'disastrous' 2019 poll. We won because the Tories imploded in 2024.

🚨 Kemi Badenoch DESTROYS BBC Whataboutism, Refuses to Equate Peaceful Tommy Marches with Hate-Filled Palestine Protests Kemi Badenoch just delivered a masterclass in standing firm against BBC whataboutism. Nick Robinson tried to equate Tommy’s marches with the weekly pro-Palestine protests that feature hate chants, harass visibly Jewish people, target synagogues, and have coincided with serious antisemitic attacks. Kemi wasn’t having it. She rightly pointed out the difference: the Palestine marches involve real harassment and abuse of Jewish people going about their lives. Tommy has always been clear, he’s anti-Islam (the ideology), not anti-Muslim (the people). Criticism of a religion and its doctrines is allowed in this country, and we mustn’t conflate that with attacking individuals. When Nick brought up Tommy’s criminal convictions and claimed Muslims feel threatened by the marches and Christian iconography, Kemi pushed back hard. She refused to accept the deflection, calling out the whataboutism: why does any discussion of antisemitic hatred against Jews instantly turn into “but what about Muslims”? Kemi stood her ground: we can criticise ideas without attacking people, and attacks on Jews are attacks on British Jews, full stop. No moral equivalence, no selective outrage. Tommy’s marches are overwhelmingly peaceful, working-class people of all ages and backgrounds, families included, who are simply fed up with what’s happening to our country. Any trouble usually comes from those determined to shut them down. This is why Kemi resonates. She refuses to play the BBC’s game. Britain needs more of this clarity. Well done, Kemi. 👏🏻

My monologue from today’s The Times at One with Andrew Neil @TimesRadio ROYAL NAVY RIP While US destroyers duke it out with Iranian navy fast boats over the Strait of Hormuz, we learned yesterday that the Royal Navy’s HMS Iron Duke, a Type 23 frigate, was being withdrawn from active service, despite a recent £100m five-year refit, which suggests that was largely a waste of money.  More important, it underlines the stark reality that we no longer have a functioning navy.  That’s right. The country of Rule Britannia, which once had the most powerful navy in the world, capable of protecting an empire which covered a quarter of the globe, no longer has a navy worthy of the name.   For the factual basis of what I’m about to say, I am indebted to Britsky, who posts important naval data on X and has become the reliable go-to source for information on our disappearing Navy.  HMS Iron Duke joins another ageing Type 23, HMS Richmond, in retirement. Leaving the Royal Navy with just five frigates to monitor Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic and other Russian activity in the Channel.  Even that doesn’t reveal the full, desperate picture. Of the five frigates still supposedly available for service, one, HMS Kent, has been almost 750 days in refit and is not available for service. HMS Portland and HMS St Albans have also been laid up for some time.  Only HMS Somerset is currently deployed and HMS Sutherland could be, pretty quickly. So the Royal Navy can call on the immediate services of only two of the five frigates we have, all dating from the 1990s.  What about the more powerful Type 45 destroyers? Sad to relate the picture is even bleaker. There are only six. One, HMS Dragon, has been deployed to the East Mediterranean to protect Cyprus, though that took some time.  Another, HMS Daring, has been in refit for 3,260 days and still not available for duty. HMS Defender has been out of action for over 1,000 days, HMS Diamond for just under 700 days. HMS Dauntless is in maintenance. Other than Dragon, out of our six destroyers, only HMS Duncan could be deployed quickly.  What about our hugely expensive, powerful Astute class submarines? Better you don’t ask. We have only five — and only one, HMS Anson, is on active service somewhere in the Indian Ocean.  The other four — Astute, Ambush, Artful and Audacious — have been laid up for a total of 4,000 days. That’s right 4,000 days. HMS Ambush alone has been inactive for 1,400 days. It’s currently laid up on the River Clyde.  So the currently deployable, conventional Royal Navy, excluding the ancient, creaking subs carrying our nuclear deterrent, amounts to two frigates, two destroyers and one sub. That’s not a navy for a maritime nation. That’s a joke.  Yes, we have two big aircraft carriers too. They also seem to spend a lot of time in maintenance, which is where they are at the moment. But both could currently be deployed pretty quickly, which is an improvement. But we don’t have the frigates or destroyers to form a carrier fleet. So they can only be used in concert with better equipped allies.  We might be short of fighting ships. But we’re not short of admirals. We currently have around 30 rear admirals or above, which works out around four per deployable ship. That’s admirals. Not captains.  None, of course, of this bloated top brass has been held accountable for the near disappearance of our naval power. Nor have any Tory politicians who for 14 years presided over our navy’s degradation. Nor is the current Labour government in any apparent hurry to put matters right. Our airforce and army are in no great shapes either. But it is the state of our non-navy, an integral, vital part of our island history, which is the real national scandal.  And, as is so often the case in modern Britain, nobody is held to account. Nobody forced to carry the can. Nobody making it their mission to put it right. And that is the real national disgrace.

White British kids aren’t killing Jews Hindus aren’t killing Jews Sikhs aren’t killing Jews Black Christians aren’t killing Jews Rastafarians aren’t killing Jews Chinese and Japanese people aren’t killing Jews Romanian and Polish immigrants aren’t killing Jews It is muslims Muslims are killing Jews Britain doesnt have an “antisemitism” problem It doesn’t have a wayward youth problem It doesn’t have a knife problem with regard to attacks on Jews It has a muslim problem Britain has an emergency with lethal, racist, backwards, violent muslims