The Tory government is suing the company that Baroness Michelle Mone recommended to it as a supplier of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during the Covid crisis – for £122 million.
PPE Medpro won contracts through the government’s so-called VIP lane in 2020 after being recommended by Baroness Mone.
But the government is now trying to get its money back on one of the deals – to supply medical gowns – through the High Court.
It has been claimed that Mone’s recommendation was duff because the equipment provided was substandard, but PPE Medpro has denied any failings on its part, saying that it supplied its gowns to the correct specification, on time and at a highly competitive price.
Instead, it was the Department of Health and Social Care that acted incompetently, by failing to correctly specify and procure the PPE it needed during the crisis – according to the company.
But how will this affect the allegations against Baroness Mone?
She is currently on a leave of absence from the Lords – and suspended as a member of the Tories – after it was alleged that she had recommended PPE Medpro as a supplier, and then taken a payment of £29 million from the firm.
Will the allegations against her be affected, depending on what the High Court decides?
This Writer thinks not.
The question hanging over the former underwear magnate concerns whether she took money from the firm after lobbying on its behalf, which is not permitted according to Parliamentary rules.
The quality of the equipment, and the robustness of the contract under which it was supplied, would be irrelevant to that – although…
They would weigh heavily on public opinion of the Lady in question.
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Under suspicion again: Cressida Dick’s decision not to investigate an alleged Christmas party at 10 Downing Street on December 18, 2020 is being reviewed. But is the correct authority handling the case?
The Independent Office of Police Conduct has cleared the Metropolitan Police of misconduct over the alleged Christmas party at Downing Street on December 18 last year.
But the exoneration does not cover the Met’s failure to investigate an alleged breach of Covid-19 social distancing rules that were in force at the time.
No – it was cleared because the complainant, Baroness Jenny Jones, was not herself adversely affected by any such failure by the police.
Baroness Jones had stated that police working outside 10 Downing Street controlled “all access to and from Downing Street”.
“Put very simply, if there was an unlawful gathering taking place at No 10 Downing Street, then the police must have known and were highly likely to have played an active part in organising or facilitating the illegal gathering,” she said.
“I believe there is a case to answer for the police aiding and abetting a criminal offence or deliberately failing to enforce the law in favour of government politicians and their staff.”
She also argued that Met Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick’s decision not to investigate the reported party represented “a potential cover-up”.
Acting Detective Chief Superintendent Tony O’Sullivan of the Met Police responded that he had referred the complaint to the IOPC, “given that you effectively allege misconduct in public office by MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] police officers”.
But the watchdog said a “valid complaint” could only be made when “an individual, or someone acting on their behalf, has been adversely affected by the alleged conduct or its effects”.
And as there was no evidence Baroness Jones had been nearby when the event took place, “we have decided it is invalid”.
What a stitch-up!
It seems to This Writer that this superintendent only made the referral to the IOPC in the terms he did in order to secure a whitewash on specious grounds.
The issue isn’t whether Jenny Jones was personally affected by the alleged party, but whether it took place in defiance of then-enforced Covid-19 rules and police knew about it.
The grounds on which the IOPC looked into this are not valid at all because nobody is going to say they have been “adversely affected” by the conduct of police in failing to enforce those rules. They were having a party and the cops were (allegedly) turning a blind eye.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that Acting Det Ch Supt O’Sullivan has referred the second part of Baroness Jones’s complaint – that Commissioner Dick had not investigated the allegation of a party at 10 Downing Street – for investigation.
But this will be carried out by the London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPC) which sets the direction and budget for the Met.
Is that the appropriate organisation to investigate such an allegation?
I don’t know.
But I fear another whitewash.
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Matt Hancock: After his blunder over GP numbers, I wrote: “Fanfare the falsehood, then quietly retract it later. Is that the plan?” Strangely enough, it’s possible that those words apply here too.
What a shame for the Tories that the naked Islamophobia in their party has reared up in the run-up to the general election!
And after all the work flogging the dead cat of Labour anti-Semitism by their friends in the mainstream media too.
First, Boris Johnson said there would be no inquiry into Tory Islamophobia before Christmas (note the tasteless use of a Christian festival there), in what seems clearly an attempt to whitewash racism out of his party’s election campaign.
Then Baroness Warsi – who has campaigned to expose Islamophobia in the Conservatives for years – tweeted her response:
2/2 Today #BorisJohnson has confirmed that there will NOT be an inquiry into #Islamophobia Yes disappointing Yes predictable Yes it’s true my party don’t give a —— about racism within our own ranks We are only anti racist to score political points Do as we say not as we do 🤦🏽♀️
And then health secretary Matt Hancock – who has already lied about the number of GPs coming into the NHS – “whitesplained” away the possibility of such racism in the Tory Party.
Responding to Baroness Warsi, he said: “Well look, I like Sayeeda. She has a particular view on this, there are others who take a more balanced approach.”
Asked if he was saying she was “unbalanced”, Hancock replied: “No, I’m certainly not saying that. I have an enormous amount of respect for Sayeeda but she does take a particular view.”
Way to make things worse, Matty-boy!
Oh @MattHancock Thank you for “whitesplaining” this to me. I’m so glad I have colleagues like you who can educate me even after my 30 years of experience of work in Race relations “”Thousand apologies sir “ 🙄🤦🏽♀️ https://t.co/7TtX34PHT8
Zelo Street‘s Tim Fenton was similarly nonplussed: “Bloody hell, I never heard being soft on racism called “more balanced” before.”
And he had more to say about the interview than The Independent, which omitted the fact that, as Mr Fenton puts it, Mr Hancock put his other foot in his mouth too:
“‘There needs to be an inquiry of course, but of course you should look into all kinds of prejudice … I think that this is something that any responsible party always needs to be on the look-out for.‘ Yes, he did indeed choose to keep his mouth open while inserting the other foot. The double standards are blatant.
“Just imagine what the response would have been if that had been a senior Labour figure and anti-Semitism allegations.”
He also quoted Labour’s Afzal Khan: “This gaslighting of Baroness Warsi’s experience and expertise within the Tory Party is a clear example of that racism in action.”
Still, BoJob has committed to an inquiry into all kinds of prejudice in the Tory Party… at some indeterminate point in the future.
So I’ll leave you with these words, again from the Zelo Street article:
“As all kinds of prejudice will be considered, perhaps Bozo would like to include Jacob Rees Mogg’s use of the anti-Semitic “Illuminati” and “Soros” dog whistles, Michael “Oiky” Gove conflating “Jews” and “Israel”, Priti Patel talking of a “North London metropolitan liberal elite”, and Jake Berry shouting “Britain First” at Jeremy Corbyn in the Commons.”
So much prejudice among just a few Conservative ministers! Who knows what sickness the others are hiding?
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Unacceptable: Cllr Andrew Bowles was readmitted to the party after a 13-day suspension for retweeting a post describing the far-right leader Tommy Robinson as a patriot, according to The Guardian.
More than a dozen Conservative councillors who were suspended over posting Islamophobic or racist content online – with some describing Saudis as “sand peasants” and sharing material comparing Asian people to dogs – have had their membership quietly reinstated, a Guardian investigation has found.
The chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum, MohammedAmin, called on the party to publish a set of formal disciplinary processes after the Guardian found 15 examples of politicians who posted content that was deemed objectionable.
The findings come amid growing concerns over the Conservative party’s attitude to reports of Islamophobia in a febrile wider climate, with the number of hate crimes against Muslims reported to have risen by 593% in the week after the attack on two New Zealand mosques.
The official Tory line, as published in The Guardian, appears to be that the members concerned had been punished appropriately.
Tories quietly reinstate 15 councillors who were suspended over posting Islamophobic and racist content online – with some describing Muslims as sand peasants and others sharing material comparing Asian people to dogs #ToryRacism#ToryIslamophobia
“Sand peasants”? “Dogs”? There are Conservative Party members who are Muslims. No wonder Baroness Warsi has been campaigning to highlight the institutional Islamophobia of her own party for so long.
Here she is, noting the latest development – along with Tom London, asking a pertinent question of our public service broadcaster, the BBC (Ofcom please note):
Why does @bbcnews give Islamophobia in Tory Party a tiny fraction of the attention it gives antisemitism in the Labour Party? https://t.co/KiPnZkms7Q
(Mind you, the Tories have a strategy to deal with Baroness Warsi – it is to attack her integrity. Consider Tim Montgomerie’s tweet – and Aleesha’s response:
Nope. What’s a disgrace is you seeing “Muslims” and “islamophobia” and instantly thinking “tErRoRiSm” whilst implying that Sayeeda Warsi denounces islamophobia cos she’s some sort of terrorist sympathiser. You’re vile. https://t.co/TGSgBRZkNS
Clearly, it is a strategy that has failed; we’ve all seen through it.)
David Schneider tweeted: “This is why we’ll take no lectures on antisemitism from the party of the hostile environment, Windrush scandal, Go Home vans, of cosying up to Orban and Zac Goldsmith’s mayoral campaign, a party that turns a blind eye to islamophobia.”
Rachel Swindon asked the Tory chairman: “Sorry to disturb your Chequers gathering @BrandonLewis – but did you think this will just get buried under your ongoing Brexit crisis?”
She added: “It is beyond any reasonable doubt @BrandonLewis is a monstrous failure of a politician. His arrogance and ignorance is being exposed for all to see. He has no control of this crisis.”
And Tom Clark, author of Another Angry Voice, asserted: “Tory disciplinary procedures for racism: Make a huge show of suspending their racists. Brag about how great their disciplinary procedures are. Quietly let them all back in after the fuss dies down. Example after example in this article.”
Quite right – because this is typical Tory behaviour.
They think rules are only relevant to other people. If they get caught breaking them, they’ll make a show of contrition, wait a while, then carry on as if nothing has happened.
Now they’ve been caught doing just that, and they have nothing to say. All they can do is claim that those they sneaked back into the party were justified in coming back.
“I am disgusted that the Tory party has quietly reinstated 15 councillors who were suspended for Islamophobia. They are an institutionally racist party that also enacts racist government policies like the Windrush scandal.”
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Look at all that white space: What a wonderful – free – canvas for any would-be Banksy to pass comment on the woman whose image stands at the top of it. At least, that’s what this artist’s impression suggests.
It seems nobody wants to have a statue of Margaret Thatcher on their doorstep.
Westminster Council rejected plans to put it up in central London last year, basing the decision on a report that it could attract “potential vandalism and civil disorder”.
Now, according to Metro, councillors in Baroness Thatcher’s hometown of Grantham, Lincolnshire, are considering putting the £300,000 statue on a 10ft plinth – also to deter “politically-motivated vandals”.
They haven’t thought it through at all.
A 10ft plinth will be a blank canvas for every wannabe Banksy who wants to try their hand at satirical graffiti.
They’ll come from every corner of the United Kingdom to make their mark on that wonderful 10ft expanse of white stone – and to make a point about the woman whose image will stand at the top of it.
And with 17 objections to the statue plan, and only seven in support, it is doubtful that many people will be upset if they do.
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We have seen that a story broke yesterday (November 18), confirming a UN inspector’s claims about the Conservative government’s policies on benefits – and BBC anchorman Andrew Marr helped a Tory minister brush it under the carpet.
This is not acceptable behaviour for a member of our national news media. We expect them to hold power to account. It might be understandable, at least, if he showed similar leniency to people of all political persuasions – but events were to prove that this was not the case.
It lays both Mr Marr and the BBC open to serious questions about their competence, impartiality and fitness to continue as a news reporter of record.
Shortly after the incident with Kwasi Kwarteng, Mr Marr interviewed Shadow Attorney General Shami Chakrabarti, discussing Theresa May’s 585-page Brexit deal.
Baroness Chakrabarti showed remarkable restraint when he – patronisingly – asked her if she had read all of the document she was there to discuss – especially as he had not.
Excellent moment from Shami Chakrabarti on #Marr explaining how @UKLabour will stay in line with worker's rights, consumer & environmental protections to be interrupted by Marr asking if she's read the document. She's read all of it & he's read some.
But what happened next went beyond the pale. Mr Marr tried to put his interviewee in an impossible – if fake – position, contrasting Labour’s manifesto commitment to honour the result of the 2016 EU referendum with her own preference for remaining in the European Union. When she responded that she was a democrat, he leaned in and warned her not to patronise him.
“Don’t patronise me!” Andrew #Marr snarls angrily at Shami Chakrabarti two minutes after asking her — the Shadow Attorney General — whether she’s read the document she came to talk about. Ok.https://t.co/p5IFTYbj1Z
It’s a completely false argument. Baroness Chakrabarti had said “I don’t know about you, Andrew, but I am a democrat.” His claim to be “as much a democrat as you are” strikes hollow, considering he was suggesting that she should have ignored the result of the referendum to follow her own preference. Is that what he would have done? Her excellent response was, in the circumstances, remarkably restrained.
Commenters on the social media were, understandably, less calm about the matter:
"Don't patronise me" says Andrew #Marr to Shami Chakrabarti, after patronising and interrupting her throughout the interview.
Nooruddean pointed out: “Andrew Marr doesn’t speak to Theresa May or Nigel Farage or Marine Le Pen like this. It’s really unprofessional.”
And Dr Lauren Gavaghan demonstrated that the attitude is evident elsewhere among BBC political anchormen: “Oh lord. Andrew Marr – really? Is this as good as you’ve got? A man with your years of experience?
“It’s as bad as Dimbleby telling me “don’t wag your finger at me young lady” once upon a time on Question Time.”
And James! drew attention to the tactic Mr Marr used to prevent Baroness Chakrabarti from upbraiding him about his own behaviour: “I can’t stop thinking about this from Andrew Marr. Totally unprofessional & uncalled for.
“Note the ‘anyway’ after his attack.
“He wants to draw it to a close and move on.
“Shameful behaviour & really quite sinister. When the mask slips…”
Many made the point that Mr Marr went on to give Dominic Raab – the former Brexit Secretary who did not understand the significance of the Dover-Calais crossing – exactly the same kind of easy ride he had provided to Kwasi Kwarteng earlier in the show:
Tory boy Andrew Marr – shouts interrupts and rants at Sturgeon and Chakrabarti now gently probes Dominic Raab who could so easily and fairly be eviscerated .
Ash Sarkar added: “It’s Andrew Marr’s job to put politicians through the wringer, no matter what their political stripe. I support that. But I just don’t understand why Dominic Raab is getting handled with kid gloves, while Shami Chakrabarti got treated like this?”
But it was MP Dan Carden who made the crucial connection – that Mr Marr supports Conservatives and undermines Labour politicians because that is the current culture at the BBC.
“We have a media that shows deference & respect to its establishment Tory chums, and derision to those who challenge the utterly broken status quo,” he tweeted.
“As Chomsky once brilliantly told Marr – ‘if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting’.”
Here’s the proof:
To be fair to Andrew Marr – you'd be permanently tetchy too, if you'd been Noamslapped as bad as this. pic.twitter.com/ByrIsqP3m2
This corresponds perfectly with the words of UN special rapporteur on poverty, Professor Philip Alston, whose report on poverty in the UK had been dismissed with a query about whether it was “appropriate” by Mr Marr earlier in the programme.
So we see a situation in which Professor Alston’s assertion, that poverty is deliberately inflicted on people by the Conservatives, is proved with an example – that of Emily Lydon. His further claim that the Conservative government is in a “state of denial” is proved by the response of Mr Kwarteng. And the assertions by commenters – that the BBC (and others in the mainstream media) have disguised or hidden the reality, and that the mainstream media are complicit with the Tories – is demonstrated by Mr Marr’s behaviour.
However, in the name of the “balance” that the BBC tries to present in its reporting, I should point out that there were some who supported Mr Marr’s meltdown.
Mennie Maahes tweeted: “I have no problem with anyone telling this mouthy foreigner where to shove her views, Marr did it from the wrong standpoint but still applicable. Interesting Marr is getting annoyed because people will not accept Remain is right-perhaps he now knows what Leave folk feel like?”
However, in the name of accuracy I must add Rachael Swindon’s response: “Referring to The Right Honourable Baroness Shami Chakribarti as a “mouthy foreigner” is rather stupid, what with her being born in the London Borough of Harrow.”
It all contributes to a standard of reporting that falls well below what we should demand of our public service – and publicly-funded – broadcaster. We don’t fund the BBC in order to be force-fed Conservative Party propaganda, no matter what Andrew Marr might think.
Sadly, we are let down by those other members of the national press who we might reasonably expect to hold the BBC to account (for not, in its turn, holding Tory politicians to account). Consider Eoin Clarke’s summary of the way the exchange between Mr Marr and Baroness Chakrabarti was reported:
Media reporting of Marr’s behaviour this morning is a disgrace. It wasn’t a “testy” exchange. It wasn’t a “spat”. Shami wasn’t “stunned”. It wasn’t “a bruising encounter”. It was a pig headed misogynistic outburst that smacked of incumbency bias & disdain for an intelligent woman
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Baroness Warsi is right to highlight the privileged status Israel seems to enjoy for no very good reason.
Why should people who leave the UK to join the Israeli Defence Force – and who may therefore take part in the appalling massacres of Palestinians that we have witnessed over the last few years – be immune from the prosecution that faces those who join other foreign military groups?
But he attitude suggests a schism with other Tories – Priti Patel, for example.
Ms Patel, formerly Secretary of State for International Development, was forced to resign after she was found to have been carrying out her own foreign policy.
This included around a dozen meetings with Israeli officials, discussing official UK government business, alongside the honorary president of the Conservative Friends of Israel, a group listed by conspirator Shai Masot as being in the pocket of the Israeli government during the Israeli embassy scandal.
She also called for the UK to give financial support to Israeli hospitals in the Golan Heights – an area of Syria that Israel has occupied.
Perhaps they treat, or have treated, UK citizens who have joined the Israeli Defence Force?
If I recall correctly, the Conservative Party has a policy that all new Tory MPs automatically join the Conservative Friends of Israel.
So it seems Baroness Warsi is unlikely to find a foothold for her reasonable suggestion. Or will the Tories prove me wrong?
British citizens who volunteer for the Israeli army should be prosecuted like others who fight for foreign forces, according to Baroness Warsi.
The former Senior Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs said people should only be legally allowed to fight for the state they are a citizen of.
It is currently possible for anyone to join the Israel Defence Force (IDF) through the “Mahal” program if they meet specific background and age requirements.
But while people fighting for various foreign forces have faced prosecution upon there return to the UK – including some who claim to have been opposing the Assad regime in Syria – those who temporarily join up with the IDF have not.
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Ken Livingstone: It seems Baroness Chakrabarti would dismiss him from Labour because it’s the easy thing to do – not because it’s right.
I didn’t see the BBC’s Sunday Politics interview with Baroness Chakrabarti, but the Guardian report on it, below, is deeply disturbing.
Ken Livingstone was accused of bringing the Labour Party into disrepute after he made a series of accurate comments about the relationship between the German Federation of Zionists and the Nazi government of that country in the 1930s.
It seems certain people did not approve of those facts being aired, so they tried to smear Mr Livingstone as an anti-Semite. They are the villains of this story.
The attack on Mr Livingstone is just part of a wider assault on the Labour Party, based on entirely false claims that anti-Semitism is running rife since Jeremy Corbyn became leader. In fact, there are fewer anti-Semites in the party since he took over.
As a lawyer (she’s the Shadow Attorney-General), Baroness Chakrabarti should know that an accused person is innocent unless they are proven guilty. No such proof has been provided to establish any guilt by Mr Livingstone.
It is true that he has questions to answer, relating to statements he made during and immediately after his disciplinary hearing at the end of March last year.
But Baroness Chakrabarti does not seem to have been referring to that.
Instead, she spoke of “what has happened in the last two years”.
I take that as meaning she thinks it would not be expedient for Mr Livingstone to be allowed to remain a member, because it would attract too much criticism to the party from those who have stirred up what is, basically, a storm in a teacup.
Instead of trying to appease the aggressors, she should be advocating a thorough investigation of them – their methods, their motives, what they stand to gain.
She isn’t.
If she would rather take the easy option – if she doesn’t have the guts to do the right thing – then perhaps she should step aside in favour of someone who does.
Shami Chakrabarti has hinted she may quit the Labour frontbench if Ken Livingstone is not expelled from the party at his next disciplinary hearing.
The shadow attorney general, who authored a report on dealing with antisemitism and racism in the party, said she did not believe there were circumstances where the party’s disciplinary panel could decide not to expel Livingstone.
The former mayor of London, who is suspended from the party after comments he made about Adolf Hitler’s support for Zionism, is expected to face his latest disciplinary hearing within three months.
“I’m sorry to say it but I don’t believe that Ken Livingstone can any longer be in the Labour party,” Chakrabarti said when asked about Livingstone’s case on the BBC’s Sunday Politics.
She said she would have to “look at the rationale” before deciding how to respond, when asked if she would step down from the frontbench, but said she found it “very difficult to see that any rational decision-maker in the light of what has happened in the last two years could find a place for Mr Livingstone in our party at this moment”.
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After a week in which she desperately tried to steer the public discourse away from the racism in her own policies, it must have been disheartening for Theresa May to hear a former chair of the Conservative Party saying the following to Robert Peston on his Sunday morning show:
Considering the way Parliament hosted a debate – in fact, more like an institutionalised slagging-off of Jeremy Corbyn – over the allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, at least one response was going to be obvious:
Will there be a House of Commons debate on institutionalised racism in the Conservative Party at some point this week? Just asking for a friend.
Believe it or not, though, the UK’s mainstream media seem keen – desperate, in fact – to sweep this under the carpet. Racism? Islamophobia? In the Conservative Party? The very thought!
At least, that seems to be the attitude.
I had to go to alleged Russian propoganda and fake news site RT to find a report on what Baroness Warsi told Peston viewers – and it was revealing:
“In light of the recent anti-Semitism row that has engulfed UK Labour, with wall-to-wall MSM broadcast, print, and social media coverage that has painted the issue as a “crisis” for the main opposition party, one may have thought this would have grabbed the attention of the media establishment.
“The reality? Cue the tumbleweed.
“Indeed, not even the presenter interviewing Baroness Warsi, Robert Peston, picked up the revelation to investigate the matter more fully.
“So, why the media silence? Could it be that the MSM are more focused on misdemeanors, perceived or otherwise, committed by Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, as part of what some see as a concerted campaign to undermine his authority and weaken his standing as leader, for fear that one day he may become prime minister?
“Others may suggest that Islamophobia is not seen by a majority of the British media as such a terrible scourge on our society as anti-Semitism.
“Whatever the reason for the MSM blackout on Baroness Warsi’s admission, the concerns of many that large sections of the media apply lower moral standards to the Tories than to Labour, will not be adequately addressed while claims of Islamophobia in the Conservative Party are ignored.”
I have written on racism in the Conservative Party in the past – yes, even before the Windrush scandal – and it would be easy to link to those articles to show examples.
But I think it would be better to offer a Muslim’s view on Islamophobia. Here‘s Aleesha – some of you may already know her from her Twitter account; she also writes a blog, and this is some of what she has to say:
“As a young British Muslim woman involved in politics, I’ve seen the rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric in British politics, and nobody is acting on it, nobody is condemning it and quite frankly, it’s disgusting that our politicians can get away with it.
“Very recently, Conservative MP, Bob Blackman shared an islamophobic page and article on his Facebook and then apologised for it when he was called out. However, this isn’t the first time that Bob has endorsed the anti-Muslim sentiment, he previously retweeted anti-Muslim posts from Tommy Robinson, a notorious bigot. Moreover, Bob Blackman had also hosted an anti-Muslim extremist in Parliament, a man who praised the Rohingya genocide, called for genocide of Kashmiri Muslims and called for Islam to be “wiped out” from this planet. What annoys me most about all of this is the entire fact that it’s hardly made the news, just briefly and there’s hardly any outrage, and our MPs aren’t condemning it or calling it out. I’d at least expect our Muslim MPs to call it out regardless of political ideologies but all I see is silence. Just imagine for a second that Bob was a Labour MP, or imagine if, in this instance, it was another religion. Just imagine the outrage. The silence from Theresa May and the Tories and their inability to act on this speaks volumes.
“Bob Blackman’s islamophobia isn’t just one case in politics. There are many. One of which dates back to the London Mayoral elections, where Zac Goldsmith launched an islamophobic campaign against Sadiq Khan. The Tories didn’t act, nobody acted and Zac Goldsmith still remains as an MP for Richmond.
“Go to Sadiq Khan’s Twitter profile, browse through his Tweets and look at all of the replies to them. You will almost always see islamophobic and racial abuse tweeted to him.
“I’m also writing this just after reading a Tweet from the official EU Leave account that said Britain has an “exploding” Muslim population.
“Why is nobody acting? I have been blocked by Tory councillors and Tory MPs when I call islamophobia out. Why are these MPs and councillors supporting islamophobes? It makes me think that the Tory party has an actual problem with islamophobia, not to mention the dozens of times I’ve been religiously abused by Tories.
“Are we just going to ignore it? When will we give these cases the rightful outrage? Islamophobia is absolutely normalised in British politics and nobody is really doing anything about it. The silence from our politicians shows their inability to act and their legitimation/endorsement of these views. Are we going to act, or are we going to do nothing and let MPs like Bob Blackman host more extremists in Parliament?”
Consider Baroness Warsi’s words at the top of this article and the answer is clear – at least as far as the Conservatives are concerned.
Islamophobia? They love it!
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Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, an independent crossbench peer who had been removed as chair of the independent inquiry into historical child sex abuse, took part in the emergency debate [Image: Rex].
How interesting that the Guardian should run with comments by Baroness Butler-Sloss, who was de-throned as chair of the inquiry into historical child sexual abuse because of past associations with people she might have had to investigate.
I mention this merely because the Graun doesn’t.
Like the Lords, This Writer has an automatic suspicion of redacted reports. Who decided what should be hidden, and on what criteria? How tight an interpretation of those rules did they use? What do they have to hide?
And it is no surprise that the police were working on a presumption that the people who had been accused were guilty. It seems the legal presumption of innocence is put aside whenever child sex offences are investigated. I have experience of this myself, in a case here in Mid Wales.
There was no material evidence to prove that the defendant had committed any offence, but the prosecutor simply demanded that – if he wasn’t guilty – he demonstrate who else could be. I thought that was the job of the police.
So, despite there being no evidence against him, this man was imprisoned for six years on the basis that he could not prove he wasn’t guilty, which is not a valid way for the UK legal system to work.
In this light, it seems that sight of the full report is vital. These inquiries are all about the secrets that people try to hide – let’s see what the police are hiding too.
A judge-led inquiry which has severely criticised the police investigation into an alleged VIP paedophile ring should be released in full, peers have said.
A summary of the report by Richard Henriques into Operation Midland, which was redacted by senior Metropolitan police officers, was released on Tuesday. It found the inquiry was launched on the basis of a single witness and made 43 separate errors.
Officers from the Met misled a senior judge to obtain search warrants and seemed to set aside the presumption of innocence to traduce the reputations of former MPs and war heroes, the report found. But only a fraction of the original 493-page report by Henriques was released to the public – and that was redacted after being examined by officers and their legal representatives.
In an emergency debate in the House of Lords, the retired judge Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, an independent crossbench peer, said: “It is so patently unsatisfactory that the full report is not produced for the public to read. Could I ask the minister whether in fact the Home Office should be urging the commissioner of police to make this report public?”
Following the release of the key findings, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, said he “fully recognised” D-day veteran and former army chief, Edwin Bramall, former Tory MP Harvey Proctor and the late former home secretary Leon Brittan were all “innocent of the offences of which they were accused”.
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![Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, an independent crossbench peer, took part in the emergency debate [Image: Rex].](https://i2.wp.com/voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/161110-Elizabeth-Butler-Sloss-Rex.png)