Tag Archives: conference

Keir Starmer does not respond well to protest [VIDEO ARTICLE]

A protester interrupted Keir Starmer’s keynote speech to the Labour Party Conference – and the party leader was not impressed.

“Protest, not power – that’s why we changed the party,” he said after the young man was forcibly dragged off the stage – indicating that Labour is a party that pursues power, and does not listen to protest.

This certainly seems true, considering Starmer’s own track record of ignoring the concerns of others…

WATCH: there’s a lot more in the clip.


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Tories are spinning like tops over Labour conference HS2 resolution

Conservatives are spewing nonsense because they seem not to understand the way Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is run.

Starmer is on the record as having said he could not commit Labour to reversing Rishi Sunak’s decision to cancel construction of the Birmingham-to-Manchester leg of the HS2 high-speed railway line because “they’ve taken a wrecking ball to it”.

He said the government was “already talking about releasing the land that would have been needed” to take the line to Manchester.

This is important because…

Concerns have been raised that Tory profiteers might pick up the land for a song and then sell it on for a huge profit, but apparently there is a reason this should not happen:

So, no backhanders for Tory friends (for a change). Also suggested is that Starmer could buy the land back with compulsory purchase orders (CPOs):

In fact, current legislation means it would have to be bought at the current market price on the date the sale happens.

So it would be possible to get the land back, even if it is sold off by the current government.

That means it is not unreasonable for delegates at the Labour Party Conference to vote for the party to reaffirm its commitment to build HS2 in full – as they have done.

This is what has set the Tories crowing.

But they don’t understand the way Labour works under the Starmer dictatorship.

Conference votes are no longer sovereign – they do not automatically become policy points that must be included in the party manifesto.

Instead, Keir Starmer’s leading clique decides whether to include such vote results or not.

So Mark Harper’s claim of more borrowing, more debt and more inflation under Labour is wrong and he should have kept his fingers away from his ‘X’ account.


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With these takes on HS2, immigration and more, should we rename the UK PM Rishi SKEWnak?

Let’s look at more of Rishi Sunak’s speech to the Conservative conference.

This is a follow-up to This Site’s previous article, Lies, DAMNED lies and truth bombs: little Rishi’s BIG conference speech.

There’s no intro from me this time so let’s dive straight in to his views on HS2, smoking, benefit reform and immigration:


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This satirical take on the Tory conference is frighteningly well-observed

It’s Jonathan Pie, with aspects of the Tory conference that Rishi Sunak may prefer to lie forgotten.

Tough. Here they are:


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Lies, DAMNED lies and truth bombs: little Rishi’s BIG conference speech [VIDEO]

This is going to be part one of a series because Rishi Sunak turned out to be very long-winded, for such a short guy.

I was hoping to be able to run a quick video summary of his speech at the Conservative Propaganda Carnival – I mean, Party Conference, but… well, watch the clip and you’ll see me explain.

And please bookmark this article, or the clip on YouTube, so you can come back to it and check what he has said against what he does.

Here’s the clip (a new version; the original turned out to have a technical fault):


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Rishi Sunak’s big conference announcement is that the Tories’ flagship project is a failure

Rishi Sunak and HS2: he’s probably wishing the locomotive was more than just a concept image – then it could run over him and release him from the humiliation of its failure.

The high-speed rail link between London and the North, that has been under construction for most of the Tories’ 13 years in office, is a nearly-£100-million white elephant, Rishi Sunak will say in his keynote speech to the Conservative conference.

He will announce that the stretch of the line from the West Midlands to Manchester is to be scrapped, meaning the entire project is now just a slightly faster route from a town just outside London to Birmingham.

Sunak will try to save face for his party by outlining alternative transport projects in the north of England and Wales which he’ll claim will be better value for money and can be completed more quickly.

Let’s hope he’s right about that, because another 13-year wait with no certainty of anything at the end would make the UK a laughing st- well, more of a laughing stock internationally than it is, even today.

It was the project’s ever-rocketing costs that killed it in the end. It was projected to take £71 billion of public money back in 2019 – before the inflation crisis of the last year or so. No figures have been mentioned in relation to its current cost – and that could be to save the prime minister his blushes.

The BBC is reporting that HS2 was originally proposed in 2010, as a flagship infrastructure project for the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition government. It was approved in 2012, when “then-Transport Secretary Justine Greening called it ‘the most significant transport infrastructure project since the building of the motorways’.”

Hindsight can be cruel, can’t it?

The Tories soon descended into squabbles over price and place – how much it would cost and whose constituencies would be disrupted by its construction. According to the Beeb,

At least £22.5bn has already been spent building the London-Birmingham section, while £2.3bn has gone towards the second phase, on things such buying up land and property.

There are also people whose lives have already been uprooted by property purchases along the planned HS2 route north of Birmingham.

If Mr Sunak announces that HS2 trains will go to Manchester using existing tracks, it follows that no extra space would be created and journey time benefits would be reduced.

What a disaster.

And, again according to the BBC, Sunak is going to announce this monumental failure in a speech when he will tell the audience that he is the man to “fundamentally change our country”. For the worse?

Apparently he and his team want this speech – possibly his last before the next general election – to turn around both his fortunes and those of his party, which has been lagging behind Labour in opinion polls for more than a year. Wishful thinking? Forlorn hopes?

It seems to This Writer that he might just as well not give a speech at all but simply throw in a towel instead.

It would be a symbolic admission that his party’s project since 2010 has failed as utterly as HS2.


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Sauce for the goose: protester ejected from Tory conference – like Tories from pubs?

Not how it happened: Anti-Brexit campaigner Steve Bray squares off against someone who appears to be Tory MP Lee Anderson.

How hypocritical. The Tories have been complaining about being thrown out of pubs and clubs in Manchester for being Tories, but had no problem with assaulting Brexit protester Steve Bray while ejecting him from a Tory conference event.

Here’s video footage of what happened:

It isn’t wonderful because we can’t see all of the altercation with a man described later by Lee Anderson as “Brave Bruce”. Here’s what the Leeanderthal had to say, coupled with a response from (look out, Tories!) a lawyer:

It doesn’t help the Leeanderthal’s case that his accompanying image is of them both brandishing their fists. The message seems clearly one of threatened violence.

And yet Tories – most particularly LGBT+ Tories – are complaining about being ejected from Manchester night spots. Watch:

The story recounted above has been vehemently denied by a drag artist who appears on stage at The New Union. According to The Manc:

According to Lara Stoned, the allegedly ‘unkind’ actions were some patrons ‘chanting “Trans Rights”.’

They also said that the group of Tories ‘threw an object’ at a New Union staff member.

Lara Stoned posted on X, formerly known as Twitter: “@GBNEWS How DARE you broadcast a story filled with lies and damaging allegations towards the community within Manchester.

“Don’t you realise those kind of remarks HINDER and THREATEN the livelihood of self employed queer performers and queer venues. Shame on you.”

They added: “They were in fact politely asked to leave when they arrived, but then continued to be disrespectful, aggressive and dangerous to the staff AND customers of the establishment. Anyone who challenges the rights of my community is not welcome in my home.”

Put it all together and who are you going to believe?

It has to be Steve Bray and the regulars at The New Union.

Anderson and the Tories have shown their aggression clearly.

And, let’s be honest, the Conservatives have proved they can’t be trusted to tell the truth by their last 13 years in government, in which they made promise after promise and broke them all.


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Will Tory conference announcements all prove as daft as this?

Social media junkie: history has shown that the worst case of someone being distracted from their work by a mobile phone is this one. Have those Covid-19-era WhatsApp messages turned up yet?

Here’s something that is typical of the Tories – certainly since they got back into office in 2010: a lack of joined-up thinking.

So we get announcements like this:

The problem? Smartphones aren’t a big issue in schools – and the policy doesn’t take account of the fact that smartphones are often used by youngsters to pay the bus fare into school – so they can’t be banned from bringing them in.

And in fact, most schools already prohibit the use of mobiles during the school day.

The policy would also apply only to schools in England because education is a devolved issue.

Put it all together and it is easy to understand why Richard Murphy (above) called it a “dead cat” policy to avoid mention of underfunding.

This Site mentioned that problem in an article yesterday. It is also discussed in the Guardian piece linked above:

Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, accused the government of failing to address the real problems facing schools of funding and staff shortages.

Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union… urged the education secretary to focus instead on the challenge of teacher recruitment, real-terms funding cuts, the lack of mental health support and rising levels of child poverty.

It seems this is just another instance in which the Tories would rather do what is easy than what is right.


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Tory liar refuses to admit her lie time and time again

Tory lies alert: yes, it’s a cartoon of David Cameron, so now you know that we’ve been catching Tories lying for at least eight years.

Here’s Clare Coutinho, Energy Secretary and Net Zero Secretary, and liar.

Apparently in her Conservative Propaganda Carnival – I mean, Party Conference – speech, Ms Coutinho told an extremely off-colour joke about the Labour Party planning to tax meat.

There is no Labour Party plan to impose a tax on meat, although I wouldn’t put it past Keir Starmer to have been writing the idea down on the back of an envelope if he heard about it.

Sophy Ridge from Sky News tackled her about it and she absolutely refused to give an inch:

That frozen expression on Coutinho’s face when she realises what she’s being asked is priceless. It’s a real rabbit-in-the-headlights moment.

And she can’t deny that she made it up.


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Vox Political reacts to Jeremy Hunt’s Tory conference speech [VIDEO]

Here’s a new thing for This Site: a video reaction to a politician’s speech.

I apologise in advance for the state of my face; I’m getting over an illness so I’m stubbly and spotty – and a bit croaky.

Here’s the clip:


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