Kirk St Moritz

@b_judah Fyi, the Netherlands' "astonishing trade to GDP ratio of 170%" reflects the "Rotterdam Effect"*, which makes this number almost meaningless here. * just google it!

You’re straying into territory in which I’m beginning to doubt your expertise. I suppose if you shop around and cherry pick for long enough you can come up with an EU member to ‘prove’ your case that UK would have performed better of it stayed in the EU. But the idea the Netherlands can be regarded as doppelgänger for the UK economy is for the birds. Also, in the 10 years before Brexit the Netherlands grew by 4/5 percentage points more than the UK. In the 10 years after the Brexit referendum the Netherlands grew 4/5 percentage points more than the UK. Remind what your point was? As for the trade to GDP %, that’s called the Rotterdam effect. Look it up.

@FT A danger to society

Labour has all too clear a vision ft.trib.al/u6KOETe

@Steve54589280 @MarcherReborn @alexwickham Total lack of moral fibre

@alexwickham @MarcherReborn Funding both sides of a war, only uk Labour could do this

NEW: The UK government has apologised for its handling of the Russian oil products sanctions Trade minister Chris Bryant concedes it was handled “clumsily” and suggests it was a cock-up He says the UK will implement sanctions on Russian oil product “as soon as possible”

The Party That Profited From The Crisis It Refuses To Solve. There is a multi billion pound industry built on the continuation of mass illegal immigration into Britain. It requires the boats to keep coming. It requires the asylum claims to keep flowing. It requires the hotels to stay full. It requires the legal challenges to keep blocking removals. Remove the crisis and the industry collapses. Which is why the industry has every incentive to ensure the crisis never ends and every incentive to fund the political parties that guarantee it will not. The Liberal Democrats are that party. Ed Davey campaigns for open borders, opposes every serious enforcement measure and demands Britain rejoin the EU customs union that would deepen its exposure to the same migration crisis now tearing the continent apart. His party has opposed the Rwanda scheme, opposed detention, opposed accelerated removals and opposed every legislative attempt to create a credible deterrent. The policy position is consistent. So is the funding. Safwan Adam was the Liberal Democrats' biggest election donor. He gave the party nearly £500,000 before the July 2024 election and over £750,000 across that year, confirmed by Electoral Commission records. Adam was a director of Stay Belvedere Hotels Limited, a company appointed in April 2021 with no prior track record in immigration accommodation. Within months it was running 51 hotels housing asylum seekers across England and Wales, providing approximately a quarter of all Home Office asylum places under a contract worth billions of pounds of taxpayer money. In the year to September 2022 SBHL reported nearly £705 million in income, almost entirely from government contracts. The company paid out £45 million in dividends. Adam and his co-director each received at least £7.8 million. Between 2020 and 2022 the company reported pre-tax profits of £75.7 million on a turnover of £888 million. The contract was subsequently stripped after the Home Office found significant elements of the company's behaviour fell short of what we would expect from a government supplier. Staff were reportedly paid as little as £5.60 an hour, below the legal minimum wage. The mechanism is not complicated. More crossings mean more asylum claims. More asylum claims mean more accommodation contracts. More accommodation contracts mean more dividends. More dividends mean more political donations. More political donations fund the party that opposes every measure that would reduce the crossings. The Liberal Democrats do not want to solve the small boats crisis. Their donor base depends on it continuing. This is not an isolated arrangement. It is the visible tip of an industrial complex that includes NGOs paid to process claims, human rights lawyers paid to challenge removals, accommodation providers paid to house arrivals and people trafficking networks paid to deliver them. Each component of that system profits from the continuation of the crisis. Each has a financial interest in open borders. Each opposes enforcement. And each, in one form or another, funds or lobbies the political parties that deliver the policy environment they require. The British public is told the small boats crisis is a humanitarian emergency requiring compassionate solutions. What it actually is, is a supply chain. People are the product. Taxpayer money is the revenue. Political donations are the return on investment. And the Liberal Democrats, the party of compassion and human rights, were a shareholder. Ed Davey wants to talk about foreign money in politics. He is right to raise it. The money that flowed from the asylum accommodation industry into his party's election fund is a reasonable place to start. "Safwan Adam was the Liberal Democrats' biggest election donor. He gave the party nearly £500,000 before the July 2024 election and over £750,000 across that year"

UK joins many EU states in now funding both sides of the Russia-Ukraine war. This madness must end. Time to sit at the negotiation table and end the pointless slaughter of human beings who long lost the desire to fight for their respective corrupt govts.

@KemiBadenoch @Ytrohs3Ytrohs Starmer's next meeting with Zelensky will be a touch frosty

After 18 months of “standing up to Putin” the Labour govt quietly issued a licence allowing imports of Russian oil refined in third countries. Yesterday Labour MPs voted AGAINST UK oil and gas licences. We are now importing from Russia instead of drilling in the North Sea. Insane.

@georgegalloway @Avalon262 Don't bring up Mid Staffs either..as Health Minister patients drinking from vases,allegedly!

Andy Burnham is a Chancer. Pass it on.

@WallStreetMav @ramonagusta Will they never learn!

🇪🇺🇩🇪 The EU just gave Angela Merkel its highest honor, the European Order of Merit. As German Chancellor she: 1) ordered the destruction of all nuclear power plants, which produced 30% of Germany’s electricity 2) she opened the borders flooding Europe with millions of Muslims

New: In the first quarter of this year there were 1,180,000 foreign nationals unemployed or economically inactive. A 43% increase since 2019. This will explode if the Boriswave gets ILR.

In the House of Lords this afternoon, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, Lord Young, warned of the chilling effect the Removal of Peerages Bill could have, with maverick peers fearful that if they say something that supposedly brings the Lords into disrepute, eg challenge progressive orthodoxy, they could be stripped of their titles. Watch Lord Young below 👇

CHAMPIONS 🏆

@amlivemon I'm allergic WEF bullshit on such matters

They should put him in a cage with lions

@JohnRentoul @clarescastle Starmer must be laughing his socks off

You can’t say, “I want to rejoin the EU,” and “I hope it happens in my lifetime,” in Sep and hope to get away with this, 8 months later

@KeechA13 Starmer must be laughing his socks off

Two major strategic u-turns in two days. #Burnham just isn’t a serious person.

WATCH: Andy Burnham Opposed Landmark Ruling to Protect Single-Sex Spaces order-order.com/2026/05/18/wat…

It is bewildering that anyone would want to be Prime Minister only to outsource the big decisions to the EU. Britain needs a leader, not a follower.

On my bucket list