BREAKING: The elections watchdog is facing a flood of complaints over allegations that Reform UK fielded swathes of super-anonymous ‘phantom candidates’ in the 2024 General Election
bylinetimes.com/2024/07/09/if-… The hyper-shy Reform UK candidates - of which there appear to be more than 70 - will help net the party hundreds of thousands of pounds in extra public cash, or ‘short money’, and hiked its national spending limits
bylinetimes.com/2024/07/09/if-…

More on "phantom" Reform UK candidates last week...

Bylines Network writer David Goff tells me he tried and failed to discover any information about the Reform candidate in his constituency (North Northumberland).

"Katherine Hales has no profile or picture on the reform website. I have been unable to find a single photo of her in the local press or a quote from her or any record of an appearance.

"There is no FB or X account with a Katherine Hales saying she is a Reform candidate and when I asked the local Reform organiser to point me in the direction of any of these he blanked me."

A contact of Goff's was a teller on the night and tells him she didn't appear at the count or the declaration.

The ultimate paper candidates: as in, they appear to exist only on paper 😆 The great egg

My jaw actually dropped reading this: More people were made homeless in England than bought their first home in the 12 months to October, Generation Rent analysis of new government figures has found today This is the first time that this has happened since records began, @genrentuk says. The campaign group says it reveals "a shift to a whole new level of horror" in the housing system

High Court judge on Lee Harpin - then at the Mirror, now Jewish News: "The majority of his payments from MGN from 2003- 2005 are likely to have been in respect of [unlawful information gathering]" Lee Harpin was referred to during the trial as the "phone hacking Dauphin"

Wow. High Court Judgement on Mirror Group phone hacking: the Mirror Group "[concealed] the truth from the House of Commons and the Leveson Inquiry"

"Even today, MGN is not being open about the extent to which [voicemail interception] and [unlawful info gathering] went on" Judge: "What is clear is that [Mirror Group] did not want Sir Brian Leveson to have a full picture of the extent to which PIs were being used by its newspapers...A very misleading picture was given of the extent to which PIs were being used after January 2005"

The new Code of Practice for how anti-union Minimum Service Levels will be imposed on public services is now out. It's a dog's dinner, requiring unions to tell their members to break strikes they voted for. Read it here assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65527249…

Get the popcorn ready. Party funding stats are out for 2022. Labour massively out-earnt the Conservatives - £47m to £31m Some more fun ones (Income left, expenditure right)

Massive income for the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which if I remember correctly has entrance exams for new members

The claim from Sunak - which you’ll hear a lot this week - that banning new oil/gas projects will drive up energy costs is an absolute nonsense. It will make nigh-on zero difference to the global price of oil/gas - which is what energy suppliers (and through that, customers) pay Switching to clean energy will *save* trillions. It is being locked into dirty fossil fuels for decades which will cost us bbc.com/news/science-e…

Another senior presenter has been suspended, according to the last Private Eye. TalkTV’s Tom Newton Dunn. Not sure that has been splashed on the front pages of The Sun, owned, like TalkTV, by Murdoch’s News UK NewsUK press office told Guido Fawkes last month he is “currently on leave”. Not clear the current status. He has faced allegations of bullying and “inappropriate behaviour” which I believe he denies

NEW: The government has once again voted down a House of Lords amendment that would have introduced checks on donations to political parties to ensure that they are not disguised payments from foreign powers In a Commons vote late last night, a motion to disagree with the Lords was passed by 289 votes to 199. Two Conservatives rebelled against the motion: Intelligence and Security Committee chair Sir Julian Lewis and Sir Jeremy Wright, another member of the ISC

NEW: Sunak will accept Johnson’s *50 person* resignation honours list to “end the acrimony” between them, the Times reports Literally seats in our Parliament being dished out for life to smooth over personal rifts

NEW: Plans are afoot to launch the UK’s biggest ever tactical voting project ahead of the next General Election, after a mega-poll of thousands of voters showed Labour’s lead is now vulnerable
bylinetimes.com/2023/06/07/pla… New modelling for the campaign group @BestForBritain published today suggests Labour could win 470 seats at the next election – a 140+ seat majority. However, Labour’s haul could fall to 316 seats if Reform UK steps aside in key Tory target constituencies
bylinetimes.com/2023/06/07/pla…

NEW: The Government currently has hold of Boris Johnson’s old phone – which contains potentially thousands of messages between him and other key figures (including the PM) on the handling of the pandemic
bylinetimes.com/2023/06/06/gov… The government continues to withhold key documents relating to former Prime Minister Johnson’s tenure – while mounting a legal challenge against the inquiry’s demands for unredacted materials
bylinetimes.com/2023/06/06/gov…

The Covid inquiry hearing is back now, after a lunch break. Hearing from the counsel for those affected by Long Covid. I'll be live-tweeting in this thread. This is a procedural hearing ahead of things kicking off properly next week - but no less important or interesting for it Previous thread from this morning (10:30-1:30ish)

https://twitter.com/josiahmortimer/status/1666019836005064704

NEW: The Covid inquiry hears that 12 Rule 9 demands for documents have been issued to ministers including PM Rishi Sunak, former PM Johnson, Raab, Mordaunt, Hancock, Truss, Badenoch and Gove Interestingly, Rule 9 requests have been issued to not just official the SAGE scientific group of advisers but @IndependentSage too

Some pretty grim new figures from the Met Police on crime in London 2021/22 compared to 22/23 (years up to May). Serious youth violence, theft and robberies up a fifth, with knife and gun crime offences up a similar amount Excuse the rather rubbish London Assembly PDF formatting

Just a roundup of some news you may have missed this past couple of weeks (amid Whatsapp and Schofield news domination)

1/? The Defence Committee published damning whistle-blower evidence revealing ongoing sexual abuse within the Armed Services 2: Eight in 10 Brits (79%) are concerned that the wealthy don’t contribute their fair share of taxes, according to new polling from the Fairness Foundation. This figure rises to 86% of people who voted Labour in the 2019 election, but is a v high 79% among Conservative voters

TUC leader Paul Nowak tells the joint @CovidJusticeUK press conference on the Covid inquiry: "Ministers can’t be the judge and jury over what’s disclosed at the inquiry". He says it's shameful that the "PM is prepared to spend taxpayers money to block handover of evidence" Frontline NHS worker Stuart Tuckwood says he was working 12-13 hour night shifts at the start of the pandemic - worried about taking breaks as they'd have to take off PPE - says they were dehydrating themselves so they didn't need to go to the loo

NEW: The government has rebuffed calls to delay or scrap the introduction of mandatory voter ID in two weeks – despite fears that thousands of people could be turned away from polling stations across England Around 70,000 people have so far applied for local councils’ free Voter Authority Certificate. But an estimated two million people across Britain are understood to lack an acceptable form of photo identification, according to the government’s own figures
bylinetimes.com/2023/04/19/no-…

More than 300 people are on the @MakeVotesMatter (plus @electoralreform and others) call ahead of a mass lobby of MPs next week to "Sort the System" and switch to PR Around 1,500 people are signed up to take part and talk to their MPs next Wednesday urging them to back proportional representation. Labour's @SKinnock, SNP's @TommySheppard and Greens' @ZackPolanski are on the prep call

NEW: Cuts leading to the closure of two-thirds of police stations in England since 2010 have directly contributed to a rise in violent crime, according to a new study
bylinetimes.com/2023/04/18/hun… Cuts have been among the most severe in London with *three quarters* of the capital's police stations closing in less than ten years