Labour party

Here’s a little game you can play at home: type the words “Labour MP defends Rosie Duffield” into Google (other search engines are available) and see what comes up. Duffield is the party’s Canterbury MP and has become a hate figure among trans activists for her refusal to accept – as is now compulsory on the Left – the movement’s insistence that “trans women are women”. Duffield holds to the old fashioned, and widely held, view that “woman” can be defined as an adult human female with a XX chromosome, and has expressed concerns about women’s sex-based rights being pushed aside in favour of “gender-based” rights. You might have thought that a party aspiring to take office in the near future would have been eager to support the many woman who share Duffield’s views, who believe that fears about the erosion of women’s sex-based rights at least deserve to be discussed openly instead of being dismissed as a symptom of “transphobia”. Alas, no. That Google search will reveal the …

[Read more...] about Labour’s silence over the hounding of Rosie Duffield is shameful

A Labour MP has been cleared of housing fraud and said that “vexatious” claims led to 18 months of sexist and racist online abuse. Apsana Begum, the MP for Poplar and Limehouse in London, had faced three charges of dishonestly failing to disclose information relating to her applications for council housing and benefits between 2013 and 2016. Ms Begum applied to go on Tower Hamlets Council’s social housing register in 2011, claiming she was living in an “overcrowded” property. She moved out of the flat in 2013 and was awarded a council flat three years later. The MP was cleared of all charges on Friday afternoon at Snaresbrook Crown Court as she spoke of the “great damage” that had been done to her reputation. “As a survivor of domestic abuse facing these vexatious charges, the last 18 months of false accusations, online sexist, racist, and Islamophobic abuse, and threats to my safety, have been exceedingly difficult,” she said. “I also thank the jury for vindicating me …

[Read more...] about Labour MP Apsana Begum cleared of housing fraud

There isn’t going to be another referendum. That remained the firm view of Scottish Tories on Saturday night as Nicola Sturgeon failed by the narrowest of margins to win the 65 seats that would have given her the overall majority she desired in the Scottish Parliament. By holding onto highly marginal seats at opposite ends of the country, and with the help of one staunch Union-backing Labour MSP, they left the otherwise victorious nationalists marooned and one seat short of what she regarded as the overwhelming mandate she says should force Boris Johnson to agree to another referendum on independence. And there is no doubt … it was unofficial tactical voting what did it, as it did for stalwart Labour Unionist Jackie Baillie in Dumbarton as well as several Tories. Surely now Labour and Lib Dem leaders have finally got the message to draw up a pact that will prosper against the separatists’s bid to smash the United Kingdom. They both turned down a proper deal this time. Never …

[Read more...] about Labour and the Lib Dems must draw up a unionist pact to stop Sturgeon’s referendum hopes

There can surely be little mystery about why Nicola Sturgeon has decided to put all of her not inconsiderable political energies into re-igniting the SNP’s clamour for another independence referendum. After all, what else does she have to offer? Breaking up Britain is all she has left for her party conference next month. The massive support of the Scottish public, which surged only a few short months ago and had excitable London-based commentators predicting the imminent end of the United Kingdom, has petered out. And internecine bickering which looked as if the SNP was engulfed in a civil war has left her once super-confident activists looking ill at ease and unsure of where their leader is taking them. It is true that she still wins plaudits from many for her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic; but even here the gloss which she acquired over much of the last year for her superior communication skills has dimmed considerably. There is no doubt that it was the vaccination …

[Read more...] about No wonder Nicola Sturgeon bangs on about independence – everything else the SNP controls is a mess

“Alba are hoisting a flag in the wind - planting our saltire on a hill,” a customarily hubristic Alex Salmond declared last Friday, as he blew up the Holyrood election campaign just 36 hours after it began with the launch of his new pro-independence party. “We shall see how many will rally to our standard.” Those answering the battle cry, his opponents claim, were not of the "strong calibre" Mr Salmond predicted, but the misfits and conspiracists of the independence movement who had already found themselves sidelined by Nicola Sturgeon's moderate SNP. The former First Minister unveiled a slate of 32 candidates on Wednesday night, just six any with parliamentary experience, while he has largely relied upon a motley crew of hardcore nationalists, failed politicians and bloggers to spread his message online. Kenny MacAskill, a former Scottish justice secretary and the MP for East Lothian, was the first major defection from the party Mr Salmond led for two decades, and in the …

[Read more...] about Pro-independence cranks, bloggers and SNP outcasts flock to Salmond’s Alba banner

Nicola Sturgeon has warned that she may only initially lift international travel restrictions for Scots who want to go abroad to meet family, and not sunseekers wanting a foreign holiday. The First Minister told a BBC One Scotland Holyrood election leaders' debate that she would consider the UK Government's traffic light scheme , which may allow holidaymakers to fly from English airports to Europe's top holiday destinations from next month. But she warned she was prepared to maintain restrictions on flying from Scotland's airports "for a little bit longer" to allow her to "open up much greater normality domestically". Ms Sturgeon said: "It may be that restrictions on international travel are the price we have to pay for that, and when we do open up we focus on family reunification before holidays". Although she said she wanted a deal on common arrangements with the UK Government and her Welsh and Northern Irish counterparts, she said it had to be "on the right four nations …

[Read more...] about Nicola Sturgeon warns international travel restrictions may not be lifted for sunseekers

It is a glorious summer's morning at Warwick University's campus on the leafy edge of Coventry. Birds are singing, and the route to the economics department is lined by a trellis almost buckling under the weight of wisteria in full bloom. A day to feel happy, then, and Professor Andrew Oswald has every reason to be so. His recent appearance on the BBC2 documentary series The Happiness Formula was proof that the economist's time has come. Oswald's long-held view that advanced western economies should concentrate less on growth and more on the wellbeing of their citizens has captured the zeitgeist. "Why else would the BBC be putting out programmes like that in more or less prime time?" he asks. "Hardly a day passes when I don't get a call from a journalist somewhere in the world." The Tory leader, David Cameron, has been saying recently that it is time we concentrated not just on GDP (gross domestic product), but on GWB (general wellbeing). So is Oswald beginning to take calls …

[Read more...] about Andrew Oswald: Ode to joy

For as long as she can remember, Margaret Wilson never understood why girls and women were treated differently. It didn’t seem to make any sense to her that women had fewer opportunities than men, made less money, had fewer rights. Decades later, having penned a memoir about her pursuit of equality, she says there was often nothing malicious in much of the discrimination she experienced as a young woman. Nor in the direct sexism she experienced as a teenager when she was told, as the only girl in the upper sixth form, to make herself scarce between lessons. She saw the fact that there were only seven women out of 200 students in her law year as progression. READ MORE: Man on a mission against discrimination Caren Rangi, chair of the Arts Council Toi Aotearoa, feels weight of expectation from arts community Performing till he's 70 - that would do opera singer James Ioelu nicely But she knew it was an unequal world she lived in. Things needed to change, and she was …

[Read more...] about National Portrait: Margaret Wilson – the change-maker

The Maltese state must bear responsibility for the murder of anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia because it created a "culture of impunity" that made the killing possible, an independent inquiry has found. Caruana Galizia, who was widely known in Malta for reporting on allegations of high-level graft, was killed by a bomb planted beneath her car as she drove home on October 16, 2017. Her assassination caused a political firestorm in Malta and eventually led to the resignation of the prime minister, Joseph Muscat, after a businessman with close ties to his government was arrested and charged with organising the murder in 2020. Mr Muscat himself has never been accused of wrongdoing. But the public enquiry, which he set up shortly before he resigned, concluded that his government had presided over a "collapse in the rule of law" that directly contributed to the murder. "The state should shoulder responsibility for the assassination," retired judge Michael Mallia, …

[Read more...] about Maltese government ‘should carry responsibility’ for the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia

Published 21 October 2020 comments Comments Share close Share page Copy link About sharing Conservative MPs have criticised a campaign for free school meals to be offered over the holidays. Last week England footballer Marcus Rashford launched a petition urging government to make the change. Some Tory MPs criticised the campaign, with Brendan Clarke-Smith calling for less "celebrity virtue signalling on Twitter". But five Tory MPs rebelled against the government to support extending free school meals over the holidays. Mr Rashford has argued that the number of children with little access to food had grown due to families losing income amid Covid-19 restriction measures. Is there really no money for free school meals? What's happening to free school meals during holidays? Rashford to fight on after meals plea rejected Food voucher U-turn after Rashford …

[Read more...] about Tory MPs attack celebrity free school meal campaigners