Ed Miliband’s plan to decarbonise the grid by 2030 is based on increasing the carbon price to £147 per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted.

As I said in my speech last night, that would mean the destruction of industry in this country (1/4). Yesterday Britain's energy intensive industries told the Industry Minister that they "will not be able to bear" the carbon price assumptions in the NESO report on decarbonising the grid by 2030. eiug.co.uk/wp-content/upl…

Behold the socialist logic that drives our suicidal energy policies.

Chris Stark, put in charge of decarbonising the Grid by Ed Miliband, says data centres vital for AI must be located not where it suits business, or where tech workers are, but where it suits the Grid (1/6). This is a Soviet mentality for an industry in which Britain has a starting advantage, thanks in particular to DeepMind. Yet it’s being jeopardised by recklessly ideological Milibandism.

And that is not more from Mr Stark’s answer.

Today’s statement from the PM on the Southport murders is a cynical masterclass in obfuscation.

He knew last summer the murders were being treated as an act of terrorism, yet told the country otherwise. A thread below establishing the truth (1/n). bbc.com/news/live/c9q7… I was prevented from asking when the PM and Home Secretary were informed that Rudakubana possessed ricin and an al-Qaeda training manual before the trial, but I have tabled written questions now due to be answered on Friday.

There are several serious problems Yvette Cooper’s statements on the rape gangs:

1. The repeat references to the Anglican and Catholic churches when supposedly responding to the failure to tackle the mostly Muslim rapists *because* of their racial and religious identity. (Did anybody in government bring up, unprompted, Muslim abusers when the Archbishop of Canterbury resigned?)

2. The complete failure to recognise that the crimes of the rape gangs were racially and religiously aggravated, with victims dismissed as “kuffar” and so on.

Yvette Cooper cannot hide in the Home Office forever.

In July she used bogus statistics to justify her asylum policies. I have asked her repeatedly to justify herself but she cannot answer.

More detail follows but this was my challenge to the Leader of the Commons today. 1/n Cooper made the claim on 22 July. To justify not deporting illegal immigrants and granting them asylum instead, she overstated the costs of the Tory policy she dropped - claiming she was saving £7 billion.

There’s more detail in this speech, but misleading the House is serious.

https://twitter.com/nj_timothy/status/1833584711308058919

I’m not into America-brained punditry but the US election poses questions of our government.

1. Trump has made clear America will not subsidise European defence any longer. The Govt has refused to put a timeline on an increase in defence spending. What’s it’s plan? (1/n). 2. American subsidies and the enormity of its equity market have drawn British talent and businesses across the Atlantic, even under Joe Biden. What is the response?

3. Trump will adopt a more confrontational approach to trade with China. How will we handle that?

Today I challenged @YvetteCooperMP, Home Secretary, about bogus statistics she used in Parliament to justify her decision to stop deporting illegal immigrants.

An explanation follows, but it was clear from her answer she had no justification to use those bogus numbers (1/7). She made the claim in Parliament on 22 July, when she said by ending the retrospective element of the Duty to Remove in the Illegal Migration Act she would save £7 billion - with a stroke of her pen. But this, as her own department told me, was nonsense. hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2024-0…

If your case for the “centre ground” includes denying the significance of our failure to control immigration, it’s clear by centre ground you mean your ideological commitment to double liberalism, not where mainstream opinion lies (1/4).

https://twitter.com/george_osborne/status/1839961182817661263

And if your takeaway from the election is we shouldn’t worry about Reform defectors - who caused us to lose many seats to Labour and the Lib Dems - instead of working out how to appeal to the country as a whole, you’re guilty of motivated reasoning.

Yesterday the Chancellor broke her election promises, paving the way to cuts for pensioners, lower infrastructure spending, and tax rises for all of us. Here are ten things we learned (1/n). 1. The so-called fiscal hole she claims to have found was no such thing. It’s a mix of in-year funding pressures and the Chancellor’s own decision to throw money at the public sector unions.

On Monday Labour are going to tell the biggest lie in British politics. They're pretending everything is worse than they realised, so they can break their promise made less than a month ago, and rinse you with taxes rises. This is why it's untrue. (1/n).

https://x.com/SkyNews/status/1816764285936164980

First off, we know this is what they have always planned, because Labour sources told the Guardian they were secretly planning to do this before the election. theguardian.com/business/artic…

The decision by Ed Miliband to grant a Development Consent Order for the giant Sunnica solar and battery farm is appalling and an insult to all the communities it affects (1/5). As the Examining Authority makes clear the scheme’s “disbenefits are not outweighed by the public benefit” which is why it “recommends that development consent for the application be refused in the terms sought.” …structure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/wp-content/ipc…

This legal advice is circulating among protestors’ Whatsapp groups. It’s not inherently illegitimate but it is very revealing: a guide on how to support Hamas without saying you support Hamas.





“the police have been instructed to try and arrest people for an offence contrary to §.12 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Don’t let that deter you.”

There’s many false assumptions with this pro-Starmer take.
1. That it is our moral duty to take refugees from safe countries.
2. That the West should take anybody who meets definitions of asylum and refugee status written in a bygone age - more than 100m people worldwide
(1/5).

https://twitter.com/rorystewartuk/status/1702230345884553501

3. That the problem with the crossings is only the danger of the journey not the loss of border control.
4. That “safe and legal” routes will end illegal entry, which can only be true if such routes were available to everyone who wants to come here - in effect therefore unlimited

Quick thread on the history of the ECHR, since I've seen lots of people repeating the argument that this is "Churchill's Convention". Insofar as that was ever true, the ECHR as it was then is completely unrecognisable compared to today (1/n): It's true Churchill and David Maxwell-Fyfe made a contribution early on, but the Attlee govt was always worried about British participation and the consequences for sovereignty. In 1950 HMG was very cautious about the ECHR, and opposed to the establishment of a Court.

The frustrating and offensive thing about the "equity" in cricket report is most people in cricket, like most in the country, are kind and welcoming. We can have a conversation about inclusivity that isn’t inflammatory and accusatory. The report fails for that reason (1/n). We all know cricket isn’t quite the national sport it should be. Many elite cricketers went to private schools. For one reason or another many feel the game “isn’t for them”. Football has eaten sporting coverage, and cricket isn’t as prominent as it was.

The impact assessment for the Rwanda policy is out, and surprise surprise this is the response. But the IA is actually an interesting bit of work, and its conclusions are not quite what the Guardian says (1/n). First off, yes the impact assessment says each removal will cost £169,000 per person. But this is the gross not net number (the Guardian isn’t doing a Brexit bus advert on us, is it?).

This story raises a lot of questions. By the school's account the Qu'ran was not kicked around (as local rumour suggested) and there was "no malicious intent" behind its minor damage. The photograph in the story shows slight scuffing on one page (1/3). bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan… So why were the boys suspended? What is the role of the "community leaders" mentioned? Why is a local councillor making claims that the school says are untrue? And what exactly are the police investigating?

We do not have blasphemy laws in this country. Nor do we want them.

There are plenty of attacks (mostly anonymous) on Gavin Williamson today. But there are good reasons why all but one prime minister since 2010 has wanted him at their side (1/n). I first met GW when he was David Cameron’s PPS. DC found him so effective he wouldn’t - as normally happened for MPs in that job - allow him to leave No10 to become a junior minister.

There’s a lot of different things swirling around regarding Suella Braverman and the Home Office at the moment. It suits her enemies to conflate them all because they dislike her political objectives. We should separate them out and consider them. Some thoughts below. First, why she resigned under Truss. Based on what’s public, she shared a draft written statement on immigration with a Tory MP to whom she’s close. Not appropriate: an error. But doesn't preclude her from doing her job with competence and propriety now. theguardian.com/politics/2022/…

Where does today leave Tories like me, who see something beyond the deficit-funded tax-cutting libertarians and the Osbornite austerity merchants? First, we’re realists, so while today is grim we must accept a correction was needed to restore confidence after the Budget disaster. There’s no point complaining about policy being dictated by those we borrow from. If your policies mean you rely on bond markets you don’t want to get on the wrong side of them. This is why the late Budget – and the libertarian ideology that inspired it – was dangerous.

It’s been five days since the Budget. Truss and Kwarteng are right that we need growth, return eventually to normal monetary policy, and reform the economy. But the package was reckless and ideological and is a disaster for the savings and livelihoods of ordinary people. First let’s deal with the excuses. The markets are not “irrational” as the free-market ideologues now say. Nor are they scared of Starmer. They are not confident that Britain has a plan to reconcile its tax and spend policies, nor that there’s a plan to pay it back.