John Glen, Tory Chief Secretary to the Treasury, got badly mauled when he tried to dissemble about the Budget in an interview with Victoria Derbyshire on the BBC’s Newsnight.
He couldn’t explain why it was a “Budget for growth” when medium-term growth forecasts have been downgraded.
And on the effects of Brexit, challenged to admit that it has made the UK poorer, he could not provide an alternative explanation for what has happened since the country left the European Union.
He crumbled under scrutiny.
Watch this car crash interview and understand why Tory leadership has taken the UK nowhere.
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Victoria Prentis: the minister for disabled people, work and health doesn’t think the government should run an information campaign telling people how to save money on their heating bills because there will be enough gas and electricity to provide the service. What good will that do if people can’t afford it?
Victoria Prentis is minister of state for disabled people, work and health – but she doesn’t seem to have much of a grip on her job.
Check out this clip from her interview with Kay Burley of Sky News:
#KayBurley – Why isn't the govt doing an ad campaign on saving energy?
Victoria Prentis – "We don't need to do this at the moment… as we are pretty certain we will have enough energy for the winter.. as we have a buffer.." #BBCBreakfastpic.twitter.com/BYVffkYgKK
“Some people can’t afford to put [the heating] on in the first place.” Damn straight.
And Prentis should know this. It’s her job.
Heating isn’t necessarily going to be affordable because of the government’s energy bill cap – because it only caps the unit price of energy, not the entire bill.
This means people cannot be sure they will only be expected to pay the capped price of £2,500 per year (£2,100 after the £400 subsidy the government is providing direct to householders – and yes, I know there are other amounts going to people with disabilities and pensioners).
Simply put: it is not a question of whether the gas or electricity is available to be used; the question is whether we can all afford to use it.
And there’s more. Here’s Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis, also criticising the government’s decision not to run an energy-saving campaign:
So Prentis wants the government to spend more money than it needs to, subsidising energy firms.
That is insane. But it’s the Liz Truss Tory government through and through.
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A Tory MP, trying to defend Liz Truss lifting the cap on bankers’ bonuses by saying the UK needs to stop them defecting to the EU, was forced to admit that bankers are only going there because of Brexit.
It’s a huge foot-in-mouth moment because Truss is currently a huge Brexiteer (she used to be a Remainer but it seems she’ll support anything if she thinks it’s good for her career) and the decision to leave the EU is not to be questioned on any level.
And it is also true; lifting the bonus cap won’t keep bankers from going to the European Union if that is where their job takes them, due to political decisions.
Here’s Maximilien Robespierre:
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How can we believe Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick when she says Prince Andrew is “not above the law”?
She put Wayne Couzens above the law. He was the murderer and rapist of Sarah Everard, who was known as “The Rapist” by colleagues at the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, years before he transferred to the Met, because of the unease he provoked in women.
It was reported that Kent Police had taken no action when in 2015 it was informed that he had been seen driving around Dover, naked from the waist down.
And the Met – which he joined in 2018 – received further accusations of indecent exposure by Couzens on two further occasions. Neither of them were investigated properly in the days before he kidnapped, raped and murdered Ms Everard.
She put the murderer(s) of Daniel Morgan above the law. She refused to provide vital documents to the independent inquiry into his death, and never provided a reasonable explanation.
She put all the police who attacked women during the vigil for Sarah Everard above the law too – by finding that they had done nothing wrong.
Who knows how many other people she has protected?
Now she says she will not protect Prince Andrew – a member of the Royal Family who enjoys a huge amount of privilege due to an accident of birth.
He is facing legal proceedings in the United States, after Virginia Giuffre filed a lawsuit under New York’s Child Victims Act, asserting that he had sexually assaulted her in that city and in London.
The case alleges the prince sexually abused Ms Giuffre – then known as Virginia Roberts – at the London home of Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, and at Epstein’s homes in Manhattan and Little St James in the US Virgin Islands.
Ms Giuffre was an accuser of Epstein, who died of apparent suicide in his jail cell before he could be brought to trial for sex trafficking offences after being accused in 2019.
Dame Dick did not expressly refer to Prince Andrew when she was asked about the Giuffre case. Instead, she said [boldings mine] “No one is above the law.”
She then went on to refer exclusively to the way the Met had handled evidence in the Epstein case:
“The position there is that we’ve had more than one allegation that is connected with Mr Epstein and we have reviewed those, assessed those and we have not opened an investigation.”
She explained that the police force asks “is there evidence of a crime, is this the right jurisdiction for this to be dealt with and is the person against whom the crime is alleged still alive?”
“We have concluded that there is no investigation for us to open and we haven’t.”
Of course they wouldn’t, if one of the criteria is that the person against whom the crime was alleged had to be still alive. Epstein is dead. And the circumstances of his death in that jail cell have always seemed more than a little suspicious to This Writer.
The most she would say about the new case was that the Met would “again review our position”.
What does she mean, “again”? It seems to me, from what she was saying, that the Met has never examined evidence against Prince Andrew. Any repeat review of the evidence would be a review of the position regarding information the Met holds against Epstein. Wouldn’t it?
But she did say, “We are of course open to working with authorities from overseas, we will give them every assistance if they ask us for anything – within the law.”
Again with the caveats: “Within the law.” As defined by whom?
And will her co-operation – or lack of it – matter?
According to New York law, Prince Andrew will have to answer the accusations against him.
If he refuses, or ignores the court – as Ms Giuffre’s lawyer says he has ignored her legal team – then it seems Ms Giuffre will win the case by default.
If that happens, then it seems the verdict could be enforced in the UK, due to agreements this country has with the United States.
Prince Andrew has denied the accusation and has even claimed that a photo showing him with an arm around Ms Giuffre (then known as Roberts) had been doctored. Would that be the photo at the top of this article? If so, what do you think?
This case will run for a while, I reckon.
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Proud of herself: Helen Whately thought it was really clever of her to belittle a Parliamentary colleague because they happened to be a person of colour who didn’t go to a public school like her.
These Tory MPs really are up themselves, aren’t they?
They seem to think that their 80+ seat majority in Parliament means they can patronise the plebs on the opposite benches.
Stupidly, they think this includes tone-policing people of colour about racism.
Take a look at the video here and the comments attached:
Just pure racism. No other word for it. Thing is, the overwhelming majority of people don't see what happens in our parliament unless the BBC decide it's worthy of a news piece. https://t.co/WbbMQwv0zs
— CrémantCommunarde#WriteToJohnson 🕊️⚖️ 🟠🌤 (@0Calamity) July 22, 2021
(How sad that it was left to a minority political organisation – the Breakthrough Party – to stand up for Labour MPs who were being attacked for not being white public school alumni.)
Most recent offender was Tory talk droid Helen Whately, whose performances indicate that she is programmed with all her responses before being wheeled out to regurgitate them in public at the House of Commons or on TV.
This would explain her failure to announce the NHS three per cent pay deal (she wasn’t programmed to mention it) but not her treatment of Dr Rosena Allin-Khan when that MP challenged her:
Tories tell A&E doctor MP to watch her 'Tone' for second time in barely a year.@Helen_Whately: "I am shocked by some of the language that she uses."
Country is shocked at 160K+ deaths. Over 300K+ infections in the last week. Shocked at the catastrophe they see daily. 🏴☠️ pic.twitter.com/kOGYusXC8Y
— The Churchill Project (@WinstonCProject) July 21, 2021
People are angry:
I’m listening to @DrRosena at The Commons. I’m again absolutely disgusted that @Helen_Whately has just tone policed her. This happened last week to @zarahsultana by Victoria Atkins. What a disgrace. What is it with the Tories wanting Muslim women to lower their tone?
It’s entirely possible that the Muslims who have become dispossessed – after Keir Starmer turned Labour into a haven for Islamophobes – will now think again before traipsing across to the Tories.
And not just Muslims:
Helen Whately, instead of telling other parties' female Mps to watch their tone, how about you stop stealing public money or your friends, and DO YOUR FUCKING JOB.
— Steve Jones #ProgressiveAlliance (@antoniosteve) July 21, 2021
Its not particularly hard to go give tory dimwit Helen Whately a good schooling, but front line Doctor and shadow health minister Dr Allin- Khan didn't just school her, she skewered her, then filleted her from top to bottom..
Here’s the thing, though: being offended won’t achieve anything. People need to take action. So I have a proposal:
Pre-emptive strikes.
It’s too late for the current session but when Parliament returns in the autumn, every Opposition MP (of whichever party) should append their questions or speeches with the words: “The minister is reminded to moderate [his/her] tone to ensure that it is acceptable.”
They should all do this, all the time – especially during Prime Minister’s Questions.
And they should only relent when a government spokesperson stands up, apologises for the behaviour of ministers like Whately, and promises that they will not try to belittle their Parliamentary colleagues in such a childish way again.
It won’t happen and I don’t know why. Presumably Opposition MPs are masochists?
Speaker: Lindsay Hoyle in action. He looks fierce in this image – but will he be quite so fierce in defending the reputation of the House of Commons, that Victoria Atkins has so casually besmirched?
After This Site highlighted the fact that the official record of Parliamentary proceedings had been ‘doctored’ to misrepresent Home Office minister Victoria Atkins’s smear against Jeremy Corbyn, we learn today that it has been quietly edited again.
Now the record presents her words as she said them, as this tweet from Leftworks shows:
Hansard has now been quietly corrected to reflect what Victoria Atkins actually said, rather than what it previously pretended she said.
— leftworks #WeAreCorbyn #IStandWithJeremyCorbyn (@leftworks1) July 15, 2021
Sadly, this has been done without a word of apology or explanation from the authorities, and this is not acceptable.
Furthermore, Atkins’s speech means she knowingly lied to Parliament – she misrepresented Jeremy Corbyn as a racist, wrongly using the EHRC investigation of the Labour Party as supporting evidence.
Lying to Parliament is a serious offence, and it is also considered extremely poor behaviour to accuse another member of Parliament in the way Ms Atkins has.
She should be dragged back to the Commons to apologise for her speech and explain why she thought it was acceptable to lie that Jeremy Corbyn was a racist in the same debate where she defended Boris Johnson, the prime minister, against the same charge, despite the many known occasions where he has exhibited such behaviour.
I have written to Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle to that effect. Here’s the text of my letter:
I published an article on my website Vox Political yesterday, referring to surreptitious editing of Hansard to misrepresent the debate on the Urgent Question about racism in the social media, in the Commons on July 14.
In that debate, Home Office minister Victoria Atkins stated, “I remind the House of the findings of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission under his [Jeremy Corbyn’s] watch: Labour ‘unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimised people because they are Jewish’.”
This was edited in Hansard with three words added as follows (I have capitalised them for ease of identification): “I remind the House of the findings of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission under his [Jeremy Corbyn’s] watch, TO DETERMINE WHETHER Labour ‘unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimised people because they are Jewish’.”
In the debate, Ms Atkins went on to say, “I will listen to many people about tackling racism and I will work with pretty much anyone, but I will take a long spoon with which to sup with this particular member.”
The effect of her speech as a whole was to falsely present Mr Corbyn, a lifelong campaigner against racism and discrimination of any kind – as I am sure you, being a Labour Party member, are awre – as a racist.
The effect of the editing of Hansard was to corruptly mitigate that falsehood in the record, making it seem she said Labour was only investigated by the EHRC when in fact she presented Labour, and Corbyn, as having been found to have committed the offence stated.
I notice that Hansard has now been surreptitiously edited for a second time, with the offending words removed. I welcome this, although I believe the people of the UK deserve an explanation as to why the falsehoods appeared in the official record in the first place. In fact, I am writing to demand one. How many other falsehoods have been edited into Hansard, unnoticed?
Additionally, the new version makes Ms Atkins’s false claim against Mr Corbyn clear again. It is unacceptable and hypocritical for a UK government minister, who defended the prime minister against allegations of racism in the face of documented historical records of it, to also falsely accuse a former Labour leader of racism in the way she has.
In addition to my demand for an explanation of the editing-in of falsehoods into Hansard, I am therefore also writing to demand that Ms Atkins be brought back to the Commons to apologise for smearing another member of Parliament in the despicable way she has.
Let me make myself clear: I am not requesting these things – I am demanding them. Ms Atkins’s behaviour has seriously harmed the reputation of the House of Commons and if you fail to act, that institution will suffer further reputational harm.
I await your confirmation that you will comply with my wishes and look forward to seeing them carried out.
I don’t expect Hoyle to comply with my demands.
Like all tribes, MPs tend to stick together when they perceive they are being attacked by someone else.
But he knows that this offence has been seen, and he’ll have to record that he received a complaint about it.
Whatever happens next, I think we should all follow some of the prime minister’s advice, and be vigilant.
Let’s make it clear to our MPs that we’re sick of their antics. They were elected to represent us in a responsible way – not to engage in playground insults and lie about it afterwards.
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Not only did a Tory minister make false claims to Parliament about racism in the Labour Party, but the official record of the debate – Hansard – was doctored to make it seem that she did not.
Worse still, Victoria Atkins had already added to her party’s tally of racism by telling a fellow MP who happens not to be white to know her place and not be uppity with her betters (although she didn’t use those exact words).
Her shocking abuse of her position has sparked a demand for the Commons Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, to take action – not just to correct the record but to save the reputation of the House of Commons.
Here’s just one complaint to Hoyle, from Twitter, with follow-up messages to show the issue:
Hi @LindsayHoyle_MP Victoria Atkins MP lied to the House yesterday during her little two-minute-hate against Corbyn. Luciana Berger had no special protection. It's a lie. When do you start taking control of the House? When is Atkins required to correct her statement?
Hansard has inserted three words into her speech that she did not say. The effect is to cover up a mistake (or deliberate falsehood) that she stated, which was to quote the remit of the EHRC as if she were quoting its conclusions. pic.twitter.com/jCWmWTdsQE
— leftworks #WeAreCorbyn #IStandWithJeremyCorbyn (@leftworks1) July 15, 2021
You can see that Leftworks is absolutely correct by watching this video (ironically posted by a fan of Atkins).
Victoria Atkins not taking any lectures from Jeremy Corbyn about online hate. pic.twitter.com/LRy2WcWeXn
She did indeed quote the EHRC’s remit as though it were that organisation’s conclusion – it was not – and Hansard did indeed insert three words to falsify the record.
The effect of Atkins’s words at the time they were said, and in that place, would have been to negate Jeremy Corbyn’s argument – she was effectively saying that he was a racist and therefore had no right to accuse others.
Furthermore, of course, her claim about Luciana Berger needing police protection was false.
Right-thinking people are up in arms about this – and rightly so:
One of the many tragic consequences of the cynical Blairite smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn is the sight of racist Tory scumbags cheering on Victoria Atkins as she berates and patronises a 72-year-old anti-racism campaigner who was opposing fascists before she was born.
— Frank Owen's Legendary Paintbrush 🟨🟥🥀🇵🇸 (@WarmongerHodges) July 14, 2021
Ms Atkins, who was standing in for her racist boss, Home Secretary Priti Patel, was in the Commons to answer an urgent question on what the government would do to stop racist abuse on the social media.
Patel had been – rightly – accused of “stoking” such abuse by Tyrone Mings of the England football team, whose teammates Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho were victims of it.
When she was tackled on the racism of her own prime minister by rising Labour star Zarah Sultana, Atkins treated her as if she were a black housemaid in the pre-Civil War American south, warning her to “lower” her “tone”:
Priti Patel was too cowardly to come and answer questions. So she sent her tone police officer Victoria Atkins. Lovely flare of classist “don’t dare speak like that to me.” pic.twitter.com/SWwwESNekc
I make no apologies for adding in this tweet, which includes much of the same video material, for the sake of Seema Chandwani’s observation about the way Ms Sultana was treated:
🙄 @zarahsultana is an amazingly intelligent and articulate woman.
But she’s non-White so her confidence and assertiveness is viewed as aggression!
— Seema Chandwani #BLM (@SeemaChandwani) July 14, 2021
Shall we have a think about racism by the prime minister – that’s Boris Johnson, by the way – and by Atkins’s boss Patel?
Let’s start with Priti Patel, who locked asylum-seekers from foreign countries into filthy concentration camps where overcrowding caused hundreds of them to catch Covid-19. How many of them died? We haven’t seen the figures.
She wants to bring in a new law making it an offence to help refugees into the UK – even by saving them from drowning in the sea off the UK’s coasts.
Another Bill passing through Parliament at the moment will target the GRT community – Gypsies, Romanies and Travellers – by assuming that they are committing crimes simply because they are Gypsies, Romanies or Travellers. This is classically-defined racism.
The Home Office at which Atkins is a minister destroyed the records showing that members of the Windrush Generation were UK citizens – and then pursued an aggressive policy to deny them services they had spent decades funding, like NHS healthcare and state benefits, while taking action to deport them. One may conclude from this that Atkins is a racist herself.
Need I go on?
As for Boris Johnson, Twitter has been full of commentary on his racism:
— leftworks #WeAreCorbyn #IStandWithJeremyCorbyn (@leftworks1) July 15, 2021
The changes to Atkins’s speech change the meaning of the words and are therefore not permissible.
As Commons Speaker – the MP who chairs sessions of the House of Commons – Lindsay Hoyle needs to act to save its reputation.
How many other changes are being made to Hansard, that nobody catches because they happen surreptitiously?
And why would Hoyle – or anyone working in Parliament – wish to support or enable these Tory racists?
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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