Keith Hotten 賀傑峰I 🇬🇧🇭🇰 道 🎗

Earn it? Taxed. Save it? Taxed. Sell it? Taxed. Spend it? Taxed. Invest it? Taxed. Build it? Taxed. Live in it? Taxed. Drive it? Taxed. Eat it? Taxed. Drink it? Taxed. Smoke it? Taxed. Give it away? Taxed. Fly? Taxed Holiday? Taxed Die? Still taxed. “I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.” ― Thomas Sowell, Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays

@KathrynPorter26 @7Kiwi My thoughts entirely - he seems to me one of life’s natural conservatives, though he may think, for the time being at least, he can have more influence on government policy by remaining where he is.

@7Kiwi His tweets since he resigned are not remotely aligned with socialist values. He looks like a conventional small government conservative which I applaud but then he should leave Labour altogether and sit as an independent or join the Conservatives

Is Carns signalling the end of Net Zero consensus inside the Labour Party? Net Zero must go to meet his ambitions.

@MrAndyNgo @harrow_council @metpoliceuk @BobBlackman 👀

London — Muslim public workers paid by taxpayers for @harrow_council make violent threats to severely injure a man. They turn off their body cameras as they make the threats & say they can leverage their relationship with @metpoliceuk to injure him.

@Jebadoo2 😂😂😂

Anyone who has prosecuted at the bar has felt this way about the diligence and effectiveness of the Crown Prosecution Service to be fair lol

The end of pretence : ‘ … that sign Starmer has placed in the window says “3.5pc of GDP on defence”. He does not mean it. Nobody does. Healey and Carns know it’s more a lie than an ambition. So they have now taken that sign down, arguing that such deceit, in current circumstances, is unconscionable.' open.substack.com/pub/frasernels…

@afneil @TalHartuv Yes, try wearing kippah around 'liberal' Oxford or Cambridge. Not sure Musk has much support there.

There’s been an appalling rise in antisemitism throughout society and on all social media platforms since the ‘Free Palestine’ movements were formed to protest and campaign against Israel’s response to October 7 2023. It’s even rampant in Ivy League universities, where I don’t think Musk’s writ runs.

@afneil Brilliant, informative, first episode Andrew. A fixture on my phone with immediate effect. 🙏

The very first edition of The Andrew Neil Report came out at the end of this week. I laid out my stall on what I hoped to achieve — a global perspective on political, economic and geopolitical trends — then investigated with Andrew Ross Sorkin (author of books on the great crashes of 1929 and 2008) the chances of another Crash before the decade is out. Here\s a link to the podcast:  podfollow.com/the-andrew-nei…  (this will take Android users to Spotify, iPhone users to Apple Podcasts). And here’s a link to the YouTube page. Enjoy. Constructive feedback welcomed. We’re just starting out! @TheAndrewNeilReport" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@TheAndrewNeil…

@DalrympleWill What a vile human being you are.

@bariweiss @TrevorPTweets @CBSNews You are very lucky to have @TrevorPTweets he’s up there with the best journalists in UK.

Thrilled to welcome @TrevorPTweets to @CBSNews.

@JamesCleverly Comedy gold.

So the ministers who haven’t seen the Defence Investment Plan thinks it’s great. And The ministers who have seen the Defence investment Plan thought it was so bad they resigned! x.com/SaulStaniforth…

@RestIsPolitics Comedy gold from @peterkyle here x.com/SaulStaniforth…

Watch LIVE from 4pm here: youtube.com/watch?v=kl6UB_…

🚨LIVESTREAM ALERT🚨 John Healey, Starmer's Defence Secretary, has resigned over the Prime Minister's Defence Investment Plan. How much trouble does this cause for the PM? And who might replace John Healey in one of the top and most important jobs in government? Join @RoryStewartUK and @campbellclaret live from 4pm BST 🇬🇧 Link in the replies👇

Comedy gold from @peterkyle

@10DowningStreet @DanJarvisMBE @DefenceHQ Dan Judas more like.

Dan Jarvis MBE MP @DanJarvisMBE has been appointed as Secretary of State for Defence @DefenceHQ.

@AlistairCarns Over to you @EdwardJDavey ?

A Green councillor called Hamas founders "martyrs". The Lib Dems made him cabinet member for children and families. Birmingham deserves answers.

@EdwardJDavey I was there Ed. Kemi said the exact opposite. This is ‘fake news’ - don’t embarrass yourself.

There it is. Vote Tory get Farage. Vote Lib Dem to stop them both.

@KemiBadenoch I was there - can 100% confirm this is BS.

This is bullshit. What I ACTUALLY said is we "cannot have another left-wing government. But I'm afraid that Reform has quite a lot of left-wing ideas. They want more benefits. They want nationalisation” I then said. On "deals, non-aggression pacts and so on....I'm just saying no. It's just no, no, no, no, no, no, no."

@AlistairCarns Follow him if you ever want to be taken seriously.

John Healey has given this country serious service in a serious time. He took on the Ministry of Defence at a moment when the world was getting more dangerous, not less, and he carried that weight with the discipline and decency that the job demands. I worked alongside him closely. I saw the hours, the care, and the seriousness he brought to every brief, including the hardest ones. There are issues facing this Department that do not lend themselves to easy answers. The work on funding, on veterans, on Legacy, on the welfare of those who serve. The threats facing this country have not paused for a change of Secretary of State. Our Armed Forces remain on operations around the world, standing with our allies, protecting our interests, and keeping the British people safe. They deserve a Ministry of Defence that matches their seriousness with our own. That is the job. It continues today.

I cannot support Reform… 1) They talk as if stopping Labour will solve all our problems, secure our borders and end illegal immigration. It will not. They say leaving the ECHR will stop the boats. It will not. What both these things would do is remove an obstacle to dealing with these challenges, but they still require highly complex and detailed solutions that Reform have not tackled in any serious way. As for two-tier policing, they think they simply have to axe DEI posts and give orders. It’s far, far more complex than that. All they’ve done is what Labour and the Conservatives did - simply tell you they’d do it, not how. These things can definately all be done, but they require an eye for detail, highly complex analysis, a depth of strategic and operational planning and a grasp of the intricacies of State that Reform has shown no sign whatsoever of even grasping, let alone being interested in. They’ve convinced you these are all simple problems to fix. They tell you it just needs the will to act, and a Prime Minister prepared to give the orders. Yes, it needs both, but it also needs a great deal more. Reform is misleading you, because they don’t want you to ask for the detail. Why? Because they don’t know how to do the detail. 2) Reform acts as though they have a right to dominate centre-right and right politics. They do not. They demonstrate petulant arrogance when challenged on that. That suggests that if they did win an election they’d be authoritarian, anti-pluralistic and anti-democratic. That worries me. 3) They tell you that if you don’t vote for them you are unpatriotic. They’re framing anyone who doesn’t vote for them as part of the problem. They’re creating an enemy out of you and anyone who worries that they’re not right for government. How dare they! That’s fundamentally undemocratic. Again, indications of authoritarianism. Their strategy is to frame everyone else as the problem, leaving them, by default, as the solution. They do that without presenting an actual solution, but just like an autocratic state, by making turning everyone else into an enemy. That’s why the right can’t unite - because doing so runs entirely against the Reform strategy that anyone other than them is the problem. 4) They tell you that only Reform can defeat Labour. Think about that for a moment. It’s utterly false. You all know it is. You know that the party that wins is not written in the stars. The party that will beat Labour and form the next government is the party that wins the most seats. If everyone voted for the Monster Raving Looney Party, they’d defeat Labour. Don’t vote for Reform because they’ve told you only they can win - that’s a lie. Vote for the party that presents you with the greatest integrity and honesty, the most credible and detailed plan for government (not just a list of bullet point intentions, but a serious, detailed and thoroughly comprehensive plan) and demonstrates convincingly that they’re not driven by their own egos and love of the limelight, but by a genuine, sincere wish to serve the United Kingdom and the British people - a genuine and sincere wish to restore our country to what it should be. Only that way will you get a government that stands a chance of not just winning, but of actually doing what it promises.

The future is contingent, but it looks like Kemi’s new Conservatives? If they do the work and not be afraid (like @NJ_Timothy - who should be shadow Home Office - from nicking some of the excellent @SDPhq policy work), then you may get what you’re, rightly in my view, arguing for here?

@NickFerrariLBC @LBC Why the rushed interview with @KemiBadenoch Nick? You did not cover ’stop and search’ as you said you would?

Morning, On the show: 🚨Police deploy water cannon on Belfast rioters: Northern Ireland Secretary joins live 📱I'll hear from Sir Mark Rowley as Met and Apple join forces to tackle phone theft 🪖PM under pressure on defence spending: Kemi Badenoch joins me @LBC 0345 60 60 973

@paulmasonnews Seems more like a statement of the bleeding obvious rather than ‘hate’?

More hate - what's OFCOM doing?