Guido Fawkes

07/12/2023

The SNP are scrambling to maintain a connection with their dwindling supporters thanks to copious amounts of Scottish scandals, resorting to the creation of a WhatsApp channel for "up-to-date news." A far cry from their unfulfilled promise of a "rebuttal unit" to respond to misleading claims about the independence campaign. Desperate times... The party sent a round robin email beckoning supporters to join the new group, saying:...

07/12/2023

The Met is ramping up its publicity campaign against Just Stop Oil - it's got new graphics and is placing stories in rags of all stripes publicising that since October 2022 JSO marches have cost the police almost £20 million. Over 300 officers every single day are having to be taken off frontline policing to deal with them. The Met's ramping up: …...

07/12/2023

As Rishi faces turmoil within his party over the Rwanda scheme and the Tories drag more than 20 points in the polls behind Labour, rumours continue to swirl around SW1 of an early election. The results are set to be dismal for the Tories, and according to Polimapper's "prime candidate" pool the UK will see the highest proportion of new MPs since 1945, when just over half of elected MPs were new....

07/12/2023

The Evening Standard hosted their glitzy columnists' lunch yesterday at LPM in Mayfair. Among honoured guests was Sadiq Khan, who turned up an hour late. The Mayor of London must not have had a lot on his plate yesterday, what with a teenager getting stabbed and Khan getting a formal reprimand for claiming that knife crime has fallen in London during his tenure. ...

07/12/2023

Following Guido's post on Tuesday about a Young European Movement-supporting civil servant Dominic Shaw, Guido understands he was suspended from his role in the Civil Service on Wednesday and is now under investigation for gross misconduct and breaching the impartiality clause in the Civil Service Code of Conduct. Shaw tells Guido he had resigned last Friday, though DfE sources say he was due to stay in post working out his notice until late January....

07/12/2023

Sunak has just delivered his press conference to defend the new Rwanda bill. Jenrick attacked it in advance as a "triumph of hope over experience", Rishi is now insisting "disapplying all the relevant sections of the Human Rights act" will be enough. According to Rishi - if Lord Sumption's happy with the bill, everyone else should be......

07/12/2023

While Downing Street wrangles with its revised Rwanda plan, Policy Exchange has been digging into claims by some civil servants that they are “institutionally bound” to try to block the government's attempts to "legislate its way out of the Supreme Court judgement" and work around international law. Typical stuff from the self-appointed social justice warriors... Policy Exchange's…...

07/12/2023

UK political parties have been filling up the coffers, totalling £25,411,733 in donations in 2023 Q3, according to the Electoral Commission. More than double last Q3, which was £11,700,902. The Tories raked in £15,758,593, fuelling further rumours of an early election. Meanwhile the Labour party only gathered a third of that, accepting £5,542,752 in donations, £2,464,242 of which were public funds. Ramping up for the election...

07/12/2023

The BBC have decided to hike their licence fee by just over £10, meaning British people will have to pay £169 a year, according to The Sun. The bosses at the broadcaster wanted to raise the figure by £15, which, as the TaxPayer's Alliance tells Guido, would have handed over a whopping £365,596,950 more based on the March 2023…...

06/12/2023

Robert Jenrick Has Resigned According to Home Office Minister Laura Farris

06/12/2023

Stay tuned…

06/12/2023

Reasonable people disagree on the category Tory Story IV falls into. Some say it’s a tragic farce – others incline to farcical tragedy. It’s hard to distinguish which is what and where anyone is. In post-modern terms it’s not a mess it’s a mash-up. Sir Keir added to the whirligig this afternoon, mashing with the best of us after his weekend exertions sucking up the ancestral spirit of the Conservative party....

06/12/2023

In a dramatic statement in the Commons, the ousted former Home Secretary Suella Braverman has laid out her Rwanda position. She said that we don't actually have to leave the ECHR, even though she favours it - emergency legislation can be enacted, but has to meet the following five tests: Rwanda scheme must meet Supreme Court's concerns about safety. Flights before next election by using notwithstanding clauses....

06/12/2023

Over at the Covid inquiry this morning they were arguing over whether the UK had the second highest death rate in Europe or not. Covid lawyer Hugo Keith KC asserted "the UK had one of the highest rates of excess deaths in Europe". World Health Organisation data for the proportional cumulative excess death count for every country in Europe tells a different story....

06/12/2023

A lot has gone on in Westminster this week, the new Rwanda treaty, Cleverly's new five-point plan to slash net migration, and even Boris Johnson gracing the Covid Inquiry today. Yet at PMQs all anyone could talk about was the late Margaret Thatcher, with praise for her from all sides of the House. Starmer and Sunak both role played Maggie. Even the leader of the SNP had a quip referencing her. The Legendary Lady lives on in the discourse...

06/12/2023

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan confirmed in front of the Education Committee this morning that trans guidance to be issued before Christmas will not restrict social transitioning. Keegan faced a fiery line from Tory MP Nick Fletcher, who asserted he "can't go to bed at night knowing a Secretary of State is allowing current trans situation in schools". Keegan hit back: "...

06/12/2023

In between having to watch protestors get escorted out of the room Boris has been defending his leadership during the pandemic at the Covid Inquiry. Hugo Keith KC asked if the constant mutual slaggings off over WhatsApp showed that "friction in government was causing a problem?". Boris hit back, arguing that robust communication is "creatively useful" and that if Thatcher's top team had WhatsApp their messages would have been "pretty fruity". Dominic Cummings would have got a run for his money...

06/12/2023

You may have recently seen billboard or newspaper adverts calling for better regulation of the va**ng industry, to help combat the levels of underage va**ng and the sale of illegal vapes. These are the work of British American To***co (BAT), the biggest va**ng manufacturer based in the UK. As a FTSE 10 UK company, our call for the government to regulate the industry more strongly may be seen by some as counterintuitive....

06/12/2023

Nigel Farage found himself in his natural habitat with a refreshing pint at the pop-up Jungle Arms pub in last night's episode of I'm A Celeb. In a memorable scene, the broadcaster serenaded his fellow jungle mates with Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy" and even went so far as to shed his shirt – a sight not easily forgotten. Singing for his supper...

06/12/2023

New research from the TaxPayers' Alliance, shared with Guido, shows Sunak’s to***co ban could lose the government £9 billion per year - equivalent to a 1p increase in the basic income tax rate and the higher rate, along with a 1% decrease in the personal allowance. The TPA have crunched latest figures from the OBR and found that, with a cost to the NHS and social care sector of about £3 billion, smokers are paying for themselves in full, and then some....

05/12/2023

Hidden in the back of the new Rwanda treaty under "Other Agreements" is this little addition: "The Parties shall make arrangements for the United Kingdom to resettle a portion of Rwanda's most vulnerable refugees in the United Kingdom, recognising both Parties' commitment towards providing better international protection for refugees" Meanwhile "all transfer requests by the United Kingdom shall require approval by Rwanda prior to any relocation" - so Rwanda gets to decide which asylum seekers it wants to take. No wonder we haven't had to cough up extra cash...

05/12/2023

Mark Drakeford had a numerical nightmare at First Minister's Questions today over Wales’ maths PISA score. Attempting to put a positive spin on Wales' less-than-stellar performance in youth math, he perfectly embodied the statistics, claiming, "just for the record to be clear, the maths scores in Wales fell, they fell by the exactly same number as the English maths scores fell." The problem is, his own numbers don't add up......

05/12/2023

The Intelligence & Security Committee has published its annual report today. Among other things it's been looking into the impact of Brexit on intelligence sharing, which they've concluded is zero. Directors of SIS, GCHQ, MI5, and Defence Intelligence have given evidence to the committee to point out that, despite Brexit, UK intelligence sharing is getting along just fine. Spooks generally prefer bilateral or trilateral co-operation, and they acknowledge EU member states would be shooting themselves in the foot if they gave up access to the UK's high-quality intel....

05/12/2023

MoD's payouts for bullying, harassment, and discrimination have doubled in the last four years. The department gave out fewer than five settlements in 2019-2020 and six in 2020-2021, though the figure doubled to 12 in 2022-23. Last month, 60 female MoD staff wrote a letter complaining of the "toxic sexist culture"... The MoD's harassment game is evidently getting costlier, as victims' payouts surged by over 60% in the past four years....

05/12/2023

James Harding's lawfare attack on the Tories has flopped for a second time this year. Guido readers will remember that the former Times editor and BBC News director has been trying since 2022 to sue the Tories for refusing to give out information about its voting membership. Tortoise Media's second attempt at judicial review has been comprehensively rejected. Justice Fordham also ruled that…...

05/12/2023

The BMA has just announced that it has rejected the government's 3% pay offer (on top of the 9% already given out) and will be striking in December from the 20th to 23rd and January from the 3rd to the 9th. A Christmas gift the government won't enjoy...

05/12/2023

In another fine example of civil service partisanship, two civil servants have been found donning the cloak of impartiality while serving on the board of the European Movement since July. This independent pressure group has a not-so-impartial mission. Pushing for a cosier relationship between the UK and the EU. Taking working two jobs to another level... Leading this clandestine operation is Dominic Shaw, who currently works in the Department for Education....

In another fine example of civil service partisanship, two civil servants have been found donning the cloak of impartiality while serving on the board of

05/12/2023

The government is now telling us to stock up on candles, battery radios, and torches to bolster our "personal resilience" in the case of an emergency. Is Sunak that unconvinced by his ability to govern? Oliver Dowden made his annual "Resilience Statement" to the Commons yesterday after visiting Porton Down and convincing himself that citizens need a "...

05/12/2023

Immigration minister Robert Jenrick went off script today on Times Radio, suggesting that further measures may be needed to cut down migration. Discussing Home Secretary James Cleverly's new five-point plan to cut net migration, he conceded there would be "merits" to introducing an annual cap on net migration, a proposal he's put forward in the past. No wonder the Tory-right love him...

05/12/2023

Rishi Sunak’s week didn’t get off to the best start, tanking in the polls to a point lower than Liz Truss, prompting the Daily Star to dub him: "even worse than The Lettuce". It’s not just the government’s media game which is spiralling out of control. Last night Number 10 was hit by an unexpected defeat in the Commons - the first of Sunak’s premiership and the first on a three line whip since the Brexit battles of 2019....

04/12/2023

It looks like it's not just Starmer who's looking to woo Conservative Party members this week. The Tories are pushing ahead with the return of actual membership cards and are asking members to vote on what design they want. The cards were scrapped in 2020 in favour of flimsy paper certificates to save the environment, or something like that. Members have been given the choice to vote between Union-waving, 1920s-revival, or two blue splodge options....

04/12/2023

Rishi has given in to pressure piling up from the Tory right to introduce new measures to slash net migration. Home Secretary James Cleverly unveiled a new five-point plan to tackle the growing numbers in a statement today in the Commons. Guido gives you the new policies: Rise in the minimum salary required for a foreign skilled worker to come to Britain from its current level of £26,200 to £38,000 from next spring....

04/12/2023

Today at an event hosted by the Resolution Foundation, Hunt blamed Brexit for more than half a decade of political instability, which led to economic instability. Blaming Brexit is supposedly against the government's position and it's unlikely Sunak would agree with his Chancellor on this. It's a major u-turn on Hunt's previous stance earlier this year that Brexit is "...

04/12/2023

A new report headed up by former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission member Robert J. Jackson has found a massive spike in short-selling before the 7th October, indicating Hamas-affiliated traders raked in millions from the terror attack. Crpyto has been taking flak for terrorist financing - fiat trading doesn't look to be any different... The analysis shows a huge spike in trading of short-dated options on Israeli companies expiring just after the attacks....

04/12/2023

Starmer has outlined Labour's so-called "securonomics" at an event hosted by the Resolution Foundation today, vowing to be "ruthless when it comes to spending every pound wisely”, whilst promising to not “turn on the spending taps”. However, during his long speech about what Labour would do with the economy, there was no mention of Labour's £28 billion a year…...

04/12/2023

Labour has now expelled two councillors in Brighton because they actually live in Leicester. Bharti Gajjar and Chandni Mistry, who are aunt and neice, have been kicked out after a 7-day internal investigation which proved they don't live in Brighton at all - they've been commuting in occasionally from Leicester. Giving civil servants a run for their money when it comes to working from home......

04/12/2023

On Friday, the rail union ASLEF began a week of train strikes and reduced service, nixing Christmas party plans across the nation. Though that didn't mean they were a Scrooge for their own party plans, as the same day, they hosted a glitzy Christmas bash with over a 100 union members at the four-star Earl of Doncaster hotel. Multiple Labour MPs attended the extravagant bash, including leading figure in the hard-left Socialist Campaign Group, Kate Osborne, who kicked off the speeches at the elaborate event....

04/12/2023

The post-reshuffle instalment of Conservative Home's cabinet league table paints a bleak picture for Sunak. James Cleverly's loyalty to Number 10 has stung him, with the new Home Secretary dropping down to 22nd place from number one last month. Sunak has slid back down over the last two months, now reaching depths of -25.4%, his lowest score yet. Hunt is up 10 points, though still in the red....

04/12/2023

Glum reading for the Tories today, as a new poll on 2019 Tories from J.L. Partners for Bloomberg shows Rishi is doing even worse than his short-lived predecessor Liz Truss. Just 59% of 2019 Tories say they'll vote Conservative, compared to 63% under Truss and 74% last summer. 18% of those voters have defected to Labour. Sunak has lost a whopping 520,000 votes since this October......

03/12/2023

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