Lord Ed Vaizey

Member @UKHouseofLords & Business Adviser. MP for Wantage & Didcot (2005-19) Tech & Culture Minister (2010-16) | Trustee @Tate | @timesradio Friday mornings

[Lord Ed Vaizey @edvaizey]

My piece in @ftweekend on how the Tories need to modernise - again

https://t.co/UI3pnCoffA

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

The Andrew Neil Report. First Edition!
I start by laying out my stall in terms of what I hope this podcast will achieve — a global perspective on politics, geopolitics and economics placing events in the context of worldwide trends.
My first guest is Andrew Ross Sorkin, author of books on the Crashes of 1929 and 2008 (that one turned into The Big Short movie). We look at what happened then to see how close we are to another (AI-inspired?) Crash today.
https://t.co/TRc2qVMbZ4 via @YouTube

[Cosine @CosineAI]

Today, Cosine hosted a breakfast panel in Westminster on Britain’s AI future, discussing how we can move from "takers to makers" through procurement reform and strategic investment.

Huge thanks to our panelists and Lord Ed Vaizey for the insightful discussion.

[Mandy ☕️🫖❤️🇬🇧 @morpethm_245]

@ToryMemo82 @edvaizey I had a washed up Tory MP The Lord Vaizey of Didcot. Fucking useless.

[Iain Dale 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧 ⚒️ @IainDale]

Disgraceful.

[Chris Clarkson 🇬🇧🇺🇦🇮🇱🇨🇾 @ToryMemo82]

This is the problem with the washed up former Tories who have defected to Reform (at all levels, but especially the former MPs) - they're so desperate to please their new boss, they'll say anything, do anything, weather any humiliation in search of acceptance.

[Rachel Wolf @racheljanetwolf]

I really like Tim but my conclusion this week was the opposite. Kemi was thoughtful and coherent in her interviews, and the distortion of her statements by many in Reform was ridiculous and unimpressive.

[Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson]

It's not just the exploitation of a tragedy.

JD Vance's picture of Britain - where migrants have led to a crime surge - is the opposite of the truth.

https://t.co/y5El5FUj7v

[Danny Shaw @DannyShawNews]

NEW. The woman who was strangled, beaten and raped by Paul Quinn in Salford in 2003 is a "hero", said Mr Justice Bright.

His remarks at the start of the sentencing hearing at Manchester Crown Court must be read. I don't think I've read anything like them before from a judge in a Crown Court:

[Lord Ed Vaizey @edvaizey]

Very sad news. A wonderful and brave lady

[MOBO Awards @MOBOAwards]

It is with immeasurable sorrow that the MOBO Organisation announces the passing of its Founder and CEO, Kanya King CBE.

Kanya passed away peacefully on 3 June 2026 after a courageous and characteristically determined battle with colon cancer. She was surrounded by her family, close friends and love.

Thirty years ago, Kanya King remortgaged her home, alone, without institutional backing or industry support, to build a stage that would transform British music forever.

She was a single mother from a Kilburn council estate who was told that Black music was too niche, that there was no market and that the industry was not interested. Instead of arguing, she built. Six weeks later, the first MOBO Awards was broadcast to the nation, and nothing was ever the same again.

What Kanya created was never simply an awards ceremony. It was an act of cultural justice. MOBO did not just celebrate Black music; it legitimised it, amplified it and transformed the cultural landscape of the UK.

From Stormzy, Little Simz and RAYE to Craig David, Ms. Dynamite, Amy Winehouse, Central Cee and countless others, generations of artists have benefited from Kanya King's vision.

She built a platform that reached hundreds of millions of people around the world. She was awarded a CBE and received an Ivors Academy Honour in 2025. She never stopped. She never asked for permission. She never accepted that the word “no” was final.

When she stood on the MOBO stage in Newcastle in February 2025, just months after her diagnosis, she told the audience: “I never allowed someone to define my limits. Not in life. Not in business. And I’m certainly not going to have that happen now.”

That was Kanya King. Right to the very end.

The 2026 MOBO Awards, held during the Organisation’s landmark 30th anniversary year, will be dedicated entirely to her memory.

The world was a profoundly better place with Kanya King in it. The MOBO family is heartbroken, but endlessly grateful, proud and inspired by everything she gave to music, culture and future generations.

Rest in power, Kanya.

You built this.

All of it.

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

Today I have met Lucy, Mark and Katie, Henry Nowak’s mother, father and stepmother. Their courage is extraordinary.

They have endured the most appalling loss, it is a life sentence for them.

They have also faced the agonising decision to release the harrowing body-worn camera footage, knowing how painful it would be and how strongly people would react. They did so because they want truth, accountability and change.

They have asked that we work across political parties and religions to rebuild trust in the police. That trust has been broken because of what happened, and I agree with them on that.

We must also be prepared to examine, carefully and seriously, religious practices or exemptions that permit the carrying of dangerous weapons in public, and other activities that are not conducive to the public good. We also need to examine where the law needs to change.

Henry’s family do not want anger to tear communities apart. They are a family who have friends across faith and race, and so did Henry. His family want his memory to help bring our society together.

Everyone knows I have strong views about how we should deal with equality under the law. What the family agreed with me on is that we need to bring common sense back, and that is what we should all be fighting for.

I promised the family that we will work to ensure there is a positive legacy for Henry out of this tragedy.

That is my focus now.

[(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges]

This is brilliant. And significant. Normally Farage scares people into backing off. Kemi Badenoch is taking the fight directly to him. Good for her.

[Conservative Peers @HLConservatives]

Today, Baroness Stedman-Scott, responded to the Government’s statement on the long awaited EHRC Code of Practice calling for the Government to come clean on the changes it requested from the EHRC and commit to correcting errors in the Code.

[Stephen Pollard @stephenpollard]

Here's my @spectator column, 'Zia Yusuf’s attack on Kemi Badenoch shows he is a hypocrite'

https://t.co/dUVmLSHr3K

I’m usually resistant to the sentiment behind one of the oldest political jokes: How can you tell when a politician is lying? His lips move. In my experience – I’ve been in and around Westminster for nearly four decades – most politicians might have large egos but they are genuinely trying to do their best for their country. The idea that all politicians lie with impunity is corrosive and wrong. But it’s not always easy to make that case. And the wilful, brazen smearing of Kemi Badenoch by Reform over her reaction to the murder of Henry Nowak is one such example of that difficulty.

Speaking on yesterday’s Good Morning Britain, the Conservative leader set out her admirable approach: “I don’t want to hear about Black Lives Matter. I don’t want to hear about White Lives Matter. We all matter. Enough of this nonsense…”

Her comments were immediately used in an attack ad by Reform, taking her phrase “I don’t want to hear about White Lives Matter” and contrasting it with words she used in 2020: “Black lives do matter”. The intention is clear: look at this black woman, who doesn’t give a damn about whites and cares only about blacks.

As I say, I’ve been around the block a bit, but in all those decades I’ve never come across a distortion as wilful, clear and grotesque as this. Both phrases lifted by Reform are not so much taken out of context as handed entirely the opposite meaning.

Take yesterday’s comment. Badenoch could not have been clearer that we shouldn’t separate black and white lives and that this form of identity politics is wrong. To take from her interview the idea that she doesn’t care about white lives is a distortion so great that it speaks volumes only about the morals of those behind it.

The same is true of the use of her 2020 phrase, “Black lives do matter”. Of course she thinks they matter. She thinks, obviously, that all lives matter equally. It’s the position Badenoch has been known for since she first entered public consciousness as Equalities Minister with a startlingly good speech in the Commons in 2020:

“I want to speak about a dangerous trend in race relations that has come far too close to home in my life, which is the promotion of Critical Race Theory, an ideology that sees my blackness as victimhood and their whiteness as oppression…Of course black lives matter, but we know that the Black Lives Matter movement is political. I know that because, at the height of the protests, I have been told of Black Lives Matter protesters calling a black armed police officer guarding Downing Street — I apologise for saying this word — “a pet ni***r”…Lots of pernicious stuff is being pushed, and we stand against that. We do not want teachers to teach their white pupils about white privilege and inherited racial guilt. Let me be clear that any school that teaches those elements of Critical Race Theory as fact, or that promotes partisan political views such as defunding the police without offering a balanced treatment of opposing views, is breaking the law.”

Reform’s home affairs spokesman, Zia Yusuf, has been determinedly pushing this attack line about Badenoch since the party decided yesterday that it would lie about her views. Yusuf, it transpires, is not merely pushing a deliberate distortion of her views. He is also a monumental hypocrite.

Just after 3pm yesterday he tweeted the Reform attack line:

“Kemi Badenoch in 2020: “Black Lives Do Matter” Kemi Badenoch in 2026: “I don’t want to hear about white lives matter” Disgraceful.”

But just one hour later, he tweeted this:

“Disgusting from the Telegraph. Nigel Farage said that “white lives matter just as much as black lives”. To shorten a sentence like that is journalistic malpractice and deliberately misleading. Would expect nothing less from the Torygraph.”

Yusuf’s hypocrisy would be laughable if the issue at the heart of all this – the murder of a young man – was not so tragic and so important. Within minutes of his only using part of what Badenoch said in order to distort her words so that they appear to mean the opposite of what she actually said, Yusuf then accused a newspaper of “journalistic malpractice” which is “deliberately misleading” for using only part of what his party leader said so that they appear to mean the opposite of what he actually said. The hypocrisy is mind blowing.

Distortion of Badenoch’s words appears to be endemic within Reform. The party’s self-styled shadow chancellor, Robert Jenrick, joined in with this: “Kemi Badenoch: “I don’t want to hear” white lives matter. Keir Starmer:

“There’s no such thing as two-tier policing”. Never have politicians been so out of touch with the people they’re paid to represent.”

Jenrick’s decision to pretend that Badenoch meant the opposite of what she actually said is especially interesting, given his transformation from supporting the England football team’s decision to take the knee – the symbol of support for the Black Lives Matter movement – at the 2022 World Cup.

“I’m fine with that,” he told Sky News. “I think that’s a choice for Harry Kane and the team, and indeed for Wales as well. These are their choices, it’s not for the government to tell them what to do. And I think when you’re playing in a country like Qatar, which does have different standards in the way it treats, for example, the LGBTQ community, it’s perfectly legitimate for the England or the Welsh team to make that stand.”

Then again, when you are up against a politician like Kemi Badenoch, whose career has been built on principle and clarity, it’s understandable why a politician whose only principle is his own career would resort to distortion and hypocrisy.

[Adam Sykes @AdamSykesWirral]

I rejoined the Conservative Party and voted for Kemi Badenoch to ensure Robert Jenrick never became the party leader. Both her and his actions over the past two days alone prove this was the right thing to do.

[Lord Ed Vaizey @edvaizey]

Awful to hear this - an incredible man

[Nick Robinson @bbcnickrobinson]

In these globally turbulent times one man has regularly acted as a wise, thoughtful and witty guide for listeners of @BBCr4today. The former Head of MI6 Sir Alex Younger has analysed, explained and contextualised the actions of Trump, Putin, Xi and the Ayatollahs. After he first appeared in the programme I was lucky enough to get to know Alex and call him my friend. I’m desperately sad to hear the news I’ve long feared was coming. Alex has died after months trying to cheat the
prognosis he was given whe. They discovered the tumour he nicknamed “Putin”.
We’re always told not to speak of a fight with cancer because it risks implying that only those strong enough survive. I understand that. I really do but sod it. Alex fought so hard to find a treatment to give him a little longer to be with Sarah and their lovely children. And he used every last minute of the short time he did have to be with family and friends and to do what he spent a lifetime in the shadows doing - using his intelligence to understand the world, to explain it but, above all, to keep us all safe.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

I knew what I was getting into when I entered this debate and compared to what others have suffered, I've got off lightly. Even so, it continues to astound that Kemi Badenoch remains the only UK political leader offering unequivocal solidarity to women defending their rights.

[(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges]

Robert Jenrick has become a parody of Robert Jenrick. He's no longer a politician. He's a piece of performance art.

[Zac Goldsmith @ZacGoldsmith]

It’s appalling to see people like Jenrick & Braverman - both of whom are intelligent and know Kemi very well- actively lying about what Kemi said.

They know she has been rock solid on identity politics forever. They have seen the full quote from which this nonsense has been extracted and warped. They know this attack is based on something that is not only wrong, it is the opposite of the truth.

They insult their members, who they presumably think aren’t capable of spotting the obvious lie. And they position Reform as just another grubby grasping lying political entity.

They should retract and apologise

[Stephen Pollard @stephenpollard]

This is revolting.
Black men are twice as likely to develop prostate cancer as white men of the same age.
It's not about two tiers, it's about focusing on those most at risk.
There's an entirely legitimate argument that screening should be available to everyone, but given the money made available, to frame this as some sort of positive discrimination in favour of black people is foul.

[Wes Streeting @wesstreeting]

I’m not going to amplify Reform’s ad by sharing it, but the wilful misrepresentation of Kemi Badenoch - selectively quoting what she said about ‘white lives matter’ - is disgraceful and dangerous.

It needs to be challenged, including by those of us who are not Conservatives.