Politics

Anyone who ever did any student politics grasps this playbook:

A teaching union has backtracked on its appointment of Matt Wrack, former head of the Fire Brigades Union, as its new general secretary after a legal challenge.

The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) had announced Wrack in the role on Tuesday but on Sunday it said that nominations would be reopened.

He would have been the NASUWT’s first leader not to have a professional background in education.

Branches were informed that the union’s national executive had received “further legal advice” over flaws in the nomination process that had excluded other candidates and allowed Wrack to be appointed unopposed as the executive’s “preferred candidate”, The Guardian reported.

Yes, yes, yes, of course it’s all wholly and entirely democratic. Look, see, we voted on it!

But the actually important vote isn’t all the peeps, oh no. It’s always the revolutionary vanguard who sit on the rules committee, which has the rules nomination committee behind it, which is in turn advised by the nomination rules committee which meets at 3 am in the basement of the Trot Party HQ and behind the door market beware of the face eating leopard….

The point of revolutionary democracy being that the peeps must do what they’re damn well told to by the revolutionary vanguard – democracy, see?

After being sacked from GB News in what he branded “one of the biggest MSM [mainstream media] beat-ups in history”, Dan Wootton soon found a new home for his tirades: YouTube.

“We are increasingly becoming an authoritarian state where dissident voices are taken down by wholesale abuses of the political and legal system,” he declared in the first episode of his Outspoken show last year.

Wootton, who claims his daily broadcast provides news and opinion with “no spin, no bias and no censorship”, is not alone in moving to the platform. He has been joined by a number of other former GB News presenters – as well as a wider group of alt-Right figures – attempting to wield power over Britain’s Right through their own media ventures.

I feel for them, really, I do. Imagine being forced to share a platform with Spud.

This is clearly anti-Farage.

It set out its detailed thinking on how the rules could be tightened on MPs’ outside interests in evidence to the House of Commons standards committee.

The policy statement said it supported asking MPs to sign up to certain principles, as suggested by the parliamentary standards commissioner, Daniel Greenberg.

In particular it favours a draft principle saying: “Members are expected not to accept offers of paid outside interests that are made, or that a reasonable observer might think are being made, primarily because of their membership of the house.”

The government also said it had concerns about some instances in which MPs were paid by the media. Its submission said: “We are concerned with specific cases in which members might hold paid contracts of employment with media organisations that give rise to conflicts of interest and attention, both in the sense that the house is responsible for the laws governing our media and that such members would be monetising their offices for private gain. Such a practice can harm the reputation of the house, further eroding public confidence in our institutions.”

Analysis by the Guardian recently found six MPs had spent on average one working day a week on second jobs since the start of the 2024 parliament, with the Reform MPs Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson taking on lucrative jobs as presenters for GB News, as well as other work.

Now given how little I know about so many things I could be wrong here. But is MP actually an office? A Minister deffo is – and they can’t accpet any money at all. Write a newspaper column and the newspaper doesn’t pay a Minister, can or might an MP.

But the other thing. Clearly this is an act of attainder aimed at Nige. On the other hand he was a TV presenter before he was an MP therefore he’s not a TV presented because of his status as an MP. So, like so much p9oliticas, this doesn’t actually acheved ther intended aim, does it?

We just tell everyone, pass a law, and therefore everyone will do what we tell them.

Right?

Children could face social media curfews under plans being considered by the Government.

Peter Kyle, the Digital Secretary, told The Telegraph that he was examining the online equivalent of a TV watershed for children after concerns that the “addictive nature” of social media was disrupting their sleep, their families and other aspects of their lives.

Governing’s just so easy!

Cooper ‘pandering’ to Farage by ordering publication of foreign criminals’ nationalities
Move expected to lead to ‘league tables’ showing which nationalities are more associated with particular crimes

The proles are getting uppity. How dare they notice?

Women could be paid “baby bonuses” of $5,000 as part of plans by the Trump administration to drive up birth rates.

Donald Trump’s aides are mulling a series of incentives to encourage women to have more children and push conservative family values, according to the New York Times.

Proposals include a “National Medal of Motherhood” to mothers with six or more children, and giving every American mother $5,000 after delivery.

The Democrats want to reinstate the choild tax credit, $5k a year or so for each child. But that’s different, see? Not nationalistic and racists and natalist at all. Because it’s a proposal from the Ds, d’ye see?

Can a 33-year-old cricket-playing socialist, who wants to freeze rent, make city transport free and once aspired to be a rapper win an already turbulent election to become the next mayor of New York?

It’s New York. Idiocy can happen.

Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist and state assembly ­member in Queens, has been the surprise package in the Democratic primary and is now poised to take on the frontrunner in the race, ex-state governor Andrew Cuomo, who is mounting a political comeback after being forced from office in the face of a series of sexual harassment claims.

Sould he? No, it would be idiocy. But then this is New York…..

Birmingham bin strike activists are plotting a new pro-Palestinian party in a “break from Labour”.

Campaigners for Unite, the union behind the bin crisis, have urged colleagues to consider joining forces with “lefty Greens”, other trade unionists and “free Palestine activists” in a new coalition.

In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Unite’s community branch in Birmingham raised the prospect of a new pro-Palestinian party to represent “real workers”.

“Fissiparous” isn’t strong enough for that left.

Also, many activists do indeed buy into that idea that it’s all connected, innit? Until Joo Capitalism can be overthrown in Palestine the none of us can be free.

Binmen themselvesmight be happy with just not suffering an £8 k a year pay loss.

Sir Philip Green should be stripped of his knighthood after his “shameless” attempt to use the European courts to place controls on Parliament’s free speech, MPs have said.

Judges at the European Court of Human Rights threw out an attempt by the Topshop billionaire to stop people whose identities are covered by controversial gagging orders being named by Parliamentarians.

Sir Philip brought the case after he was named in the House of Lords in 2018 by Labour peer Lord Hain as the businessman who had an injunction to prevent him identified in relation to MeToo allegations revealed by a Telegraph investigation.

The European court ruled on Tuesday that the controls Sir Philip was calling for would be “unprecedented” and could amount to the courts having “indirect control” of free speech.

Someone goes to court to protect his rights. He should therefore be stripped of his honours?

Really, people should be stripped of distinctions for having the temerity to go to law?

I think that’s one of those you fuck off, matey, moments, no? Fuck right off moments.

Areas that received money from the last government’s much-criticised levelling up fund tended to have lower votes for Reform UK in the general election, a study has found, indicating that projects delivering quick results may hold back support for populism.

The study by the Social Market Foundation (SMF) thinktank, billed as the first to examine a mass of data factors linked to support for Reform at the level of individual seats, identified a series of factors likely to make voters more likely to back Nigel Farage’s party.

Therefore tax money should be spent on the political goal of dishing the one political party. You know, the peoples’ money should be spent upon keeping us establishment in power. Of course.

Despite the political effectiveness of levelling up funding

Yes, that is what they mean.

David Lammy has attacked Kemi Badenoch over “cheerleading” for Israel, after it denied entry to two Labour MPs.

Yuan Yang and Abtisam Mohamed were deported on Saturday, after the Israeli immigration ministry said they planned to spread “anti-Israel hatred”.

The decision was labelled “unacceptable” by Mr Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, who said he had raised it with his Israeli counterparts.

Well, yes, mebbe etc. Except:

Geert Wilders, the rightwing Dutch politician accused of Islamophobia, was today refused entry to the UK after arriving at Heathrow airport in London.

Wilders was due to show his 17-minute film Fitna, which criticises the Qur’an as a “fascist book”, at the House of Lords today. But on Tuesday he received a letter from the Home Office refusing him entry because his opinions “threaten community harmony and therefore public safety”.

That was in 2009. So, Labour are just fine with banning a parliamentarian from a friendly country going to meet folk in our own legislature.

So, you know….

A Labour MP has been arrested on suspicion of rape and child sex offences.

Dan Norris, a former minister and the serving MP for North East Somerset, was arrested and taken into custody after police raided his constituency home on Friday.

Mr Norris, who previously worked as a teacher and child protection officer, has been immediately suspended from the Labour Party pending the outcome of the police investigation.

The time to return is….

Mr Norris holds a master’s degree in social work and has described himself as “a qualified and former practicing child protection officer”.

Oh Aye.

More than 60 of Reform UK’s council candidates standing in this year’s elections are defectors from the Conservative party, according to research from the Labour party.

People interested in politics change the brand they stand under.

Absolutely no one, ever, has stood for SWP, CPGB and the rest and then stood for Labour later in life, have they?

An obvious candidate is Mick Lynch, the retired general secretary of the RMT union, whose effortless slapdowns of obtuse TV presenters showed his promise as the anti-Farage. His appeal is a combination of working-class experience, authenticity, composure and an ability to make political arguments accessible to the average punter. But he shows no signs of desiring a mantle that, admittedly, involves being hounded by a thuggish media. Yet someone with his qualities could be a focal point for otherwise disparate disillusionment. It would mean striking an arrangement with the Greens, who rode the wave of pre-election distaste with Starmerism to come second in dozens of constituencies, despite their abysmal failure to capitalise since.

Any leader would have to shift the debate from the “culture wars” to economic justice. The former is intended to drive the left into defensive territory and, as Ronald Reagan astutely observed, in politics, “if you’re explaining, you’re losing”. But if the left drew attention to inequality and disintegrating public services, and made the case for taxing the rich, the right would be forced to explain itself instead. This does not mean throwing minorities under a publicly owned bus. It simply means that issues that emphasise the shared, common interests of the majority should be at the forefront.

Dump all the culture stuff and talk economics. With, of course, a Duce to lead the charge!

Can’t help but think that has been tried before……

Far-Right politicians in Germany could be banned from running for office under plans by the incoming government, echoing a decision in France to block Marine Le Pen from a presidential bid.

Germany’s centre-Right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party and the centre-Left Social Democrats (SPD), which are holding coalition talks, have proposed a law that will block people with multiple extremism convictions from standing in elections.

What is extremism that will get you convinced will then move from a shriek of “Sieg, Heil” to that much more pernicious “Are we absolutely certain we require quite so many immigrants?”

Most democratic.

The stupidity is that, of course, it’s not extremists getting elected which is the problem. It’s that half the damn country is willing to vote for extremists. What hasve you, you rulng class, fucked up so badly that that happens?

An Istanbul court has formally arrested the city’s mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, on corruption charges, sending him to pre-trial detention on the day he received his party’s nomination to run for president, while tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in the city.

On the other hand, banning that Romanian from running for office is terribly good, very good indeed.

One is a bit left, d’ye see? The other isn’t….

A Bangladeshi court has issued a travel ban on Tulip Siddiq, the former Treasury minister.

The former Treasury minister, who is currently living in the UK, would not be allowed to leave Bangladesh if she entered the country.

The court also ordered the seizure of a flat in Dhaka previously owned by the Labour MP before she transferred it to her sister.

All, wholly, allegations and nothing more, of course. But also the UK’s anti-corruption minister at one point…..

To friends of democracy around the world: we need your help.

You know that the Trump regime is brutally attacking US democracy. Most of us did not vote for Donald Trump (half of us didn’t even vote in the 2024 election). But he feels he has a mandate to take a wrecking ball to the constitution.

Like most bullies, the regime can be constrained only if everyone stands up to the bullying – including you.

First, if you are considering a trip to the United States, please reconsider. Why reward Trump’s America with your tourist dollars?

Spending by non-Americans in the United States is a significant source of tax revenue and a major “export” of this nation. There’s no reason for you to indirectly support Trump’s economy.

Yep. He wants those minimum wage workers at Disneyland/world laid off because Orange Man Bad won a free and fair election.

Putrid little shit.

Rachel Reeves’ National Insurance tax raid will not raise “a single penny” for public services, according to analysis by the shadow chancellor.

Businesses were hit with an increase in employers’ NI from 13.8 per cent to 15 per cent in October’s Budget, with the aim of raising £25.7 billion a year.

But Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, claimed the Chancellor’s “economic mismanagement” meant all the expected money either was not raised in the first place or has been frittered away.

So, some will indeed be raised it’ll just not be spent upon what you think it should be?

He said: “The Chancellor promised £25 billion from her jobs tax, but we’re likely to end up with less money for our public services because of Labour’s economic mismanagement.

Much of the mismanagement would have happened without the tax, no?

Those who have been to school with Worstall, T (OK, OK, very different year but….) are not those you want as political enemies:

The charges brought against the former leader are the culmination of years of work by activists, lawyers and victims, who documented abuses committed under his government, often at great personal risk. But Duterte arguably would not have been surrendered to The Hague if it weren’t for his family’s dramatic feud with that of Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the current president.

The two families were once allies. Marcos Jr ran on a joint ticket with Duterte’s eldest daughter – Sara Duterte, now the vice-president – in the 2022 election, winning a landslide victory. At the time, Marcos Jr, who capitalised on the popularity of the Duterte name, was careful not to criticise Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, and promised not to cooperate with the international criminal court’s continuing investigation.

But the Duterte-Marcos marriage of convenience descended into a bitter dispute, with Sara Duterte launching scathing attacks on the president, even threatening to dig up the remains of his late father, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr, and throw them into the sea.

Bongbong for the win. So far at least.