Tag Archives: ministers

UK government ministers accused of complicity in Israeli war crimes against Gaza

Allegations: Tayab Ali.

Four members of the UK Parliament, believed to be government ministers, are among those accused of complicity in Israeli war crimes against Palestinian people in Gaza.

Also accused by the International Centre for Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) are nine UK citizens who are said to have fought as soldiers with the Israel Defence Force.

The ICJP has handed in a 70-page dossier of evidence to the Metropolitan Police’s war crimes unit, describing it as just the first tranche of what it expects to be a much larger body of information – along with hard drives.

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The ICJP had previously issued Labour MPs Sir Keir Starmer, Emily Thornberry and David Lammy with a public notice of intention to prosecute any UK officials allegedly complict with war crimes, accusing them of defending of Israel’s withholding of food, water and electricity to Gaza.

ICJP director Tayab Ali and others announced the move at a press conference on Tuesday (January 16):

The Metropolitan Police war crimes unit must now examine the material to determine whether to carry out a formal investigation.

What’s the betting that the allegations against any senior politicians are ignored?


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Oliver Dowden made multiple false claims at PMQs last week. And now?

Oliver Dowden: if he had done this, he might have suffered less reputational damage than he undoubtedly will after today’s Deputy PMQs fiasco.

As Oliver Dowden commenced on his second Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions in as many Wednesdays, This Writer filed the following opinion:

He has form.

Last week, the website Left Foot Forward devoted an entire article to falsehoods told by Dowden. It stated:

Full Fact, the campaigns team of independent fact checkers, issued two corrections… Firstly, was a claim by Dowden that the NHS waiting lists are ‘coming down’. Whilst some waiting lists, such as patients waiting over 18 months for a treatment, have fallen, the overall number of cases of waiting in England are at a record high.

He repeated this lie today (July 12) – and yes, it is a lie. Last week he could have got away with saying he didn’t know the information was wrong, but now he can’t.

Secondly the fact checkers pulled up on another claim made by Dowden that the government had been ‘cutting taxes’ for national living wage earners by doubling the personal allowance.

Citing a similar claim made by the deputy prime minster last month, where he said minimum wage earners had seen a £1,000 reduction in their tax, the campaign organisation highlighted that on both occasions this was potentially misleading as Dowden failed to make it clear that this was based on a counterfactual estimate.

Whilst minimum wage earners are paying less tax this year than they would have since 2010 if tax thresholds had gone up in line with inflation, that doesn’t mean the amount they pay has actually decreased compared to 2010.

So it’s a load of jargon, and it seems the deputy PM doesn’t understand it. What can we expect? He’s a person of very little brain.

Labour MP Lisa Nandy also took to Twitter to fact check the deputy MP on two points. First was his claim that his government had built more council houses, which she referenced to an article which cites official government data showing how 161,577 social rent homes had been completed since 2010. Compared to 362,912 between 1997 and 2010.

That’s a straightforward falsehood, then.

Next the deputy PM said that, under his government, record numbers of housing had been being built.

Nandy referred to figures this year that showed planning application in England had actually fallen to their lowest level in at least 16 years.

Furthermore, the Home Builders Federation has predicted England’s housebuilding levels will soon fall to their lowest since the second world war.

That’s a straightforward falsehood, then!

To round it off, the Deputy PM was called out during points of order refereeing to a claim he make on the 7th June, when he said the Labour Party’s plan to invest £28 billion in green energy would add £1,000 more to people’s mortgages. Dowden apparently made the claim a day after the Daily Mail reported this figure, but he said it came from treasury analysis.

However, the treasury has admitted that the figure did not come from their analysis and was forced to make the admission that this was not true. The statistics authority was unable to find any official source for the figure after investigation.

So that’s five falsehoods from last week and two (so far) – including one outright lie – from today (July 12, 2023).

How many more will the fact checkers find?

Source: Tory Deputy Leader slammed over multiple false claims during PMQs – Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK’s progressive debate


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Labour’s tuition fee u-turn: ‘circumstances may change but principles shouldn’t’

The excuses man: we can use this image again because all of the excuses in it are short-term issues. Starmer’s justifying his u-turns by saying circumstances change… but policies should not. Otherwise we don’t know what Starmer’s party stands for, what it will do, or even whether it intends to represent us.

Good for Good Morning Britain for hammering StarmerLabour’s latest two-faced u-turn!

To recap: After giving a solemn commitment (a pledge) to abolish tuition fees in 2020, Keir Starmer has u-turned, saying the financial situation has changed and Labour now has to prioritise its plans:

GMB‘s Susanna Reid, interviewing Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, made the point that “circumstances may change, but principles should not” – adding (alongside co-presenter Martin Lewis) that Starmer has dropped many more of the original 10 pledges he used to get himself elected as Labour leader (This Writer is fairly sure he’s dropped them all by now):

So StarmerLabour is also LyingLabour. I used to correct people who accused his party by calling it “Liebour” but he has made them right.

He paid for it in Prime Minister’s Questions on May 3, when the Westminster leader of the SNP (!), Stephen Flynn, put the boot in – much to Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak’s joy:

Contrast that with the politics of Jeremy Corbyn, who was ousted as leader after a concentrated, years-long, campaign against him by members of his own party who support Starmer now:

One more point: Changing circumstances don’t need to affect government policy. The Covid crisis and the war in Ukraine have happened, sure – but they are temporary; short-term. Government policy should be long-term.

Political plans should be made in ways that accommodate unexpected developments; they need to represent a coherent political position for which each party stands.

Changing policy on a whim, as Starmer does, puts the electorate on shifting sands. What does Starmer really want to do? Who does he represent?

I don’t know the answer to either of those questions but I know two things:

He doesn’t want to do anything for me. And he certainly doesn’t represent me.


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Out of touch Tory Dominic Raab can’t get Paul O’Grady’s name right

UK Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab showed he was so out-of-touch he couldn’t even get late comedian Paul O’Grady’s name right – while paying tribute to him during Prime Minister’s Questions.

He compounded the offence by adding an unnecessary attack on ‘woke’ comedy:


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Another perspective on PMQs – it’s even worse for Rishi Sunak than we thought

This is excellent from Phil Moorhouse on A Different Bias.

It seems Rishi Sunak’s claims of integrity are in ruins – because he chose the stability of the Conservative Party over the good name of his government.

There are many excellent points teased out in this clip and I heartily recommend it:

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An alternative view of PMQs – and it echoes Vox Political

I promised to publish alternative takes on Prime Minister’s Questions – and here’s one now.

But it doesn’t say much that I haven’t already.

There’s a bit of context: Rishi Sunak recycled lots of Boris Johnson’s old lines against the Labour Party because he was coached by Michael Gove, apparently.

But much of the rest of the commentary follows This Writer’s initial take, as PMQs was happening:

What do you think?

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Liz Truss faces her third Prime Minister’s Questions. Will they be her last?

Liz Truss fielded her third PMQs amid an atmosphere of extreme discontent with her handling of the affairs of government.

How well do YOU think she managed?

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Inflation tops 10% again: more bad news for Liz Truss

This is from the Office for National Statistics:

The CPI measure of inflation rose to 10.1% in September.

The figure climbed from 9.9% in August to match the recent 40-year high seen in July.

The ONS said the largest upwards driver came from food costs, while fuel provided the greatest downside pressure.

It seems supermarkets and other retailers are passing their increased costs on to consumers – that means you and me.

You can bet Liz Truss will be asked about this in Prime Minister’s Questions.

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Another #BorisJohnson #Partygate lie as he dismisses claims about new photo?

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was momentarily blindsided when a Labour MP challenged him with brand-new allegations about him attending 2020 Christmas parties, during Prime Minister’s Questions on February 9, 2022.

Here’s the moment when Fabian Hamilton, MP for Leeds North East, brought the matter to Johnson’s attention:

He was referring to this photo:

How is Mr Hamilton “completely in error”? Johnson may not be “surrounded” by alcohol and food, but there is quite clearly an open bottle of what looks like champagne on the table in front of him, along with a packet of crisps that has been torn open in the way that happens at social events when many people are invited to dip in and take some.

And there’s definitely one person wearing tinsel.

It really does look “a lot like one of the Christmas parties that [Johnson] told us never happened”.

So… perhaps Johnson was mistaken in his answer. And of course he did not respond to the thrust of the question.

That’s okay – he was given an opportunity to correct the record only minutes later, courtesy of Labour’s Gerald Jones:

“That event already has been submitted for investigation,” Johnson spluttered, after stuttering several times (a sure ‘tell’ that he was trying to mislead us all).

Has it?

The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg wasn’t so sure when she discussed it on Politics Live, a few minutes later. She said Cabinet Office secretary Sue Gray, who had carried out Johnson’s investigation (not an independent one), had chosen not to refer it to the police.

But this is a photo of the prime minister, in a party situation, at Christmas 2020 – and finding such evidence was exactly the purpose of the Gray investigation. If she did not pass this evidence of criminal activity on to the police, then she was derelict in her duty.

Gray’s interim report is vague about this. It states: “The Metropolitan Police has now confirmed that as a result of information provided by the Cabinet Office investigation team, as well as assessments made by Metropolitan Police officers, they are investigating the events on the dates set out above with the exception of the gatherings on:
• 15 May 2020
• 27 November 2020
• 10 December 2020
• 15 December 2020.”

It does not explain whether all the information Gray had received had been passed on to the police; it does not explain whether Gray herself chose to tell the police which events to investigate; and it does not explain whether the police made that decision.

In any case, it seems unlikely that Sue Gray even had the image (above) to pass on at the time she discussed these events with the police, as it has only just become public, according to Pippa Crerar in The Mirror, where the story of this new development was broken.

So it seems clear that this new evidence should indeed be passed to the police, who should reconsider whether to add the Christmas Quiz of December 15, 2020 to the 12 events they are already investigating.

If they don’t, even more serious criticisms will be made about Metropolitan Police bias and the suitability of Cressida Dick, who is an alumnus of Balliol College, Oxford, along with Boris Johnson, to continue in her role.

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Ministers demand investigation of Covid-19 NHS and care worker deaths. What result are they after?

Yet again: the PPE used in UK hospitals is pictured bottom right. It seems a new inquiry has been commissioned, to claim that this was enough to protect doctors and nurses from catching Covid-19 in hospitals.

When you read that Tory ministers have asked medical examiners to investigate whether the Covid-19 that killed NHS and care home staff was contracted as a consequence of their work, what do you think?

Call me superstitious but it makes This Writer think Boris Johnson is trying to find an excuse to say his government’s failures aren’t responsible.

Bear in mind that Johnson has been heavily criticised for failing to order the personal protective equipment (PPE) necessary to protect NHS staff.

And the Tory government’s decision to ship care home residents who had contracted the disease back to their places of residence was also attacked as a cause of more than 20,000 excess deaths.

It would be hugely valuable to Johnson if a report could be cooked up, exonerating him of any connection with these deaths – or at least, with the vast majority of them.

The medical examiners involved in the review are described as “senior doctors employed in hospitals to independently review all deaths to verify the correct cause of death and identify any treatment concerns”.

By a curious coincidence, they were “introduced in the NHS last year”.

Never mind superstitious – call me plain suspicious if you want, but I have a doubt about the result of this inquiry. How about you?

Source: Coronavirus: Deaths of hundreds of frontline NHS and care workers to be investigated | The Independent

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