Ian Shorten

Earthling, Englishman, Egalitarian

[Save/PreserveScampton e: [email protected] @SaveScampton]

Hello everyone well well well the Scampton Holdings offer to buy RAF SCampton has been rejected!
I spent 5 years fighting to keep Scampton open and then to buy it as a living working site as museum only as you saw in my proposal.....
Now what!!!! @peter_levy

[Alex Burghart @alexburghart]

When the Severe Alert system was established in 2024 it was made clear that:

“There will be a very high threshold for its use based on strict criteria centred on an immediate risk to life.”

Tonight’s use at a national level clearly doesn’t hit that threshold and opens the door to future misuse of the system.

Labour needs to publish who signed off the decision to use the alert and the criteria that they were using.

[Gully Foyle #UKTrade @TerraOrBust]

England will be remembered for the legendary victory against Mexico at the Azteca, and the best game of the competition against France.

Spain will be remembered for winning the competition.

Argentina will be remembered for being violent unsportsmanlike cheats.

[Falkland Islands Legislative Assembly @FIAssembly]

The #FalklandIslands Legislative Assembly has written to @FIFAcom following the display of political messaging by the Argentina team after last night's semi-final. Politics has no place in sport..
#WorldCup

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

Some corrections:
You inherited 2% inflation. It doubled in 12 months after you became Chancellor. It is still 50% above the rate you inherited and 50% above target. It should fall to target 2% this summer. So two years to get back to where you started! What’s to boast about that?
Interest rates have been falling everywhere. UK cuts, which you don’t control, have been fewer and smaller because of your inflation record. We still have highest interest rate in G7. The Bank has made some cuts for the simple reason the economy is flat on its back. Well done.
Borrowing is slowly falling from a very high base. Almost six years after the pandemic-induced recession, we’re still borrowing around 4% GDP. And borrowing costs are the highest in the G7.
Retail sales are up in recent months. We’ll see how long that’s sustained. But the hospitality and construction industries are in crisis. Plus our massive services sector is stagnant.
UK fastest G7 economy? That’s simply a bare-faced lie. We grew by 0.1% in Q3 2025; and another 0.1% in Q4. End of.

[Dr Robert Lyman 🇺🇦 @robert_lyman]

Gosh this is good. Thank you @spectator

[Kathryn Porter @KathrynPorter26]

You are so wrong..

Under the Petroleum Act 1998 the state owns all the oil and gas. It's produced by private companies under licence

100% of the gas comes onto the GB grid because that's where the pipes go. It's not optional 😂

Most of the oil goes to overseas refineries because we only have four refineries left. Our refineries have to pay carbon taxes. Imported refined products do not and are not included in the CBAM, so are at a huge structural disadvantage

Amazing how green lobbyists are putting out all this misi all of a sudden 🙄

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

@EdwardJDavey, you have misread the argument so comprehensively that one has to wonder whether it is deliberate.

Nobody is objecting to freedom of worship. Nick Timothy did not say Muslims should not be allowed to pray. He said mass ritual prayer in a shared national civic space is an act of domination, and cited the former extremist turned scholar Ed Husain, who has spent his career documenting exactly this phenomenon. The Adhan, the call to prayer, declares there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger. That is by definition a theological repudiation of every other faith. When projected into Trafalgar Square, a national memorial to British sovereignty and independence, it is not equivalent to a celebration. It is a declaration. The distinction is theological, not political, and it is precise.

You invoke freedom of worship as though Timothy had called for mosques to be closed. He did not. You invoke British values as though observing that the domination of public spaces is straight from the Islamist playbook is somehow un-British. It is not. It is documented, sourced and supported by scholars who have spent decades inside Islamist movements.

This week, thousands of people gathered on the Embankment chanting death to America and death to Israel. Bobby Vylan led chants of death death death to the IDF, cleared by the CPS last year and back on a London stage doing it again. The Islamic Human Rights Commission, named in a Lords report as part of Iran's soft power network in Britain, addressed the crowd. Thirty six Labour MPs wrote to the Parliamentary Commissioner demanding the investigation of a man for pointing out what every serious student of Islamism already knows. The Attorney General deployed his Jewish identity to defend a declaration that, by its own theological logic, repudiates Judaism. And your contribution to all of it is a tweet accusing people who raise these questions of stoking fear, hatred and division.

You lead a party that voted consistently to keep Britain in the European Union against the democratic will of the British people. A party that has positioned itself as the political home of progressive appeasement, that has never met an Islamist grievance it would not accommodate, and whose response to every act of cultural intimidation is to accuse those who name it of bigotry. The Liberal Democrats have no record of defending British values under pressure. They have a record of redefining British values to mean whatever is least likely to cause offence to the most vocal pressure group in the room.

Freedom of worship is indeed a fundamental British value. So is freedom of speech. So is the freedom to observe, without being accused of racism, that a theological declaration of exclusive truth projected into a national monument is not the same as lighting a menorah or performing a Passion play. Nick Timothy exercised that freedom. The full weight of the parliamentary and political establishment descended on him within twenty four hours.
That is the state of British politics today, Ed. And you are part of the problem, not the solution.

"Nick Timothy didn't say Muslims shouldn't be allowed to pray. He said mass ritual prayer in a shared national civic space is an act of domination, and cited the former extremist turned scholar Ed Husain, who has spent his career documenting exactly this phenomenon."

[Ian Shorten @IanShortenUK]

@KathrynPorter26 @bberrybeth365 Not stupid. Lying.
https://t.co/w87m7ePyfn

[HJB News @HJB_News__]

🚨Watch: Keir Starmer lied on camera. HE KNEW 👇

[Ian Shorten @IanShortenUK]

@avgorou Some of it is.

[Ian Shorten @IanShortenUK]

@exRAF_Al I remember this day. I was in Ayia Napa. Spent a lot of time on armed guard duty in the following weeks.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

I see Nicola Sturgeon is once again complaining that I posted a picture of myself wearing a T-shirt with her name on it and the legend 'Destroyer of Women's Rights.' Apparently this didn't 'elevate the debate.'

Is there a clinical term for an individual who has extreme thinness of skin when it comes to their own perceived hurts, coupled with a rhino-hide when it comes to the fear and suffering of others?

I'm thinking in particular of the two women Isla Bryson raped, who had to watch their First Minister squirm and smirk on TV as she tried to avoid admitting he was a man; of the five survivors of male violence who were ready to give evidence to Sturgeon's committee on gender self-ID, but were told to put their concerns in writing while seventeen trans-identified people appeared in person; of the mother of a young girl with a learning disability who campaigned against self-ID because she wanted her daughter to be guaranteed same sex intimate care, should she need it (the mother was presumably one of those female opponents Sturgeon calls 'shrill' and 'hysterical' in her memoir); of the ten-year-old girl sexually assaulted in a public bathroom by a 6'5" paedophile who served his jail sentence in a women's prison because he called himself 'Katie'; of Sandie Peggie, forced to discuss her own menstrual history in public to justify not wanting to undress in view of a 6ft straight cross-dresser in the nurses' changing room; of Marion Millar, dragged into court because she tweeted a picture of suffragette ribbons; of the Scottish rape crisis centres reliant on government funding who were pressured to admit trans-identified males into their services if they wanted funding to continue.

When Sturgeon refers to an 'elevated debate', she means a discussion that takes place within a tiny, smug bubble from which regular women suffering real life consequences of her policies are firmly excluded. These faceless ants are loftily dismissed as bigots, or, to be more precise: 'transphobic, misogynistic, homophobic, maybe racist as well.'

Nicola, you hated the T-shirt picture because you couldn't ignore it, as you'd ignored so many other women trying to make you understand their concerns. Appeals to your empathy, your intelligence and your compassion all failed. Apparently the only way to get through to you is through your vanity.

[Daniel Hannan @DanielJHannan]

Parliament has been misled. So have our American allies. There never was a legal threat to the operability of the Diego Garcia base. The entire handover - the betrayal of the Chagossians, the £34 billion bill, the eco-vandalism, the win for China - was premised on a falsehood.

[Robert Midgley @RobertMidgley07]

My analysis is based on the evidence - it’s now up for Parliament to decide if it has been misled by the government.

https://t.co/aV3TU4QrFk

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

Today marks the end of the survivor participation for our rape gang inquiry hearings. I simply have no words that describe the bravery and courage of these women who have come forward.

No words.

What they have been through is indescribable.

It has been a life-changing experience for me. I never thought such evil was possible. Never. Not here, in Britain. In our towns, in our communities. It is pure evil. These men are so utterly depraved.

If it were up to me, thousands of them would receive the death penalty.

To do what they did, on such an industrial scale, to innocent young girls - many of whom were already in such an incredibly vulnerable place? There is no redemption possible. The world is a better place without them in it.

I started this inquiry because so many others failed.

Speaking honestly, I did not understand how deep this evil is rooted in our society.

Police, politicians, council officials, the NHS, social workers, children’s homes - it is everywhere.

IS everywhere. Not was. IS.

Meeting these women, and men, listening to how severely they were failed by those tasked to protect them? My views have changed forever. I knew it was bad. I never knew how bad it was.

Every single one who has come forward is a hero in my view.

The courage and grace in how they have conducted themselves is unlike anything I have seen in my life. All because they don’t want others to suffer the same fate. That is an extraordinary sacrifice. They could have just moved on with their lives. Tried to forget. But no, they chose to do this. I am in awe of all of them.

Our hearings will finish tomorrow, following the contribution of three more expert witnesses.

Then the next stage begins. We will produce a report, and then we will seek to put people in prison. There are FAR more testimonies and evidence to release - this will keep coming and coming and coming.

Even with a media blackout, we have reached tens of millions. We have made real progress.

And following such immense demand, we will reopen the portal so that more women can tell their stories.

This is just the beginning.

Politicians from all parties have failed these girls, again and again and again.

I do not intend to join that list.

To everyone who donated, thank you. To our team, thank you. And especially to the survivors, thank you.

I believe that together we can start to make Britain understand what is happening, and then finally do something about it.

[Chagos Islands Government in Exile @BiotCitize56752]

@GreatBritishPAC why does Labour persist with an agenda that hands away our British homeland, commits billions of taxpayers’ money for a 99‑year period, and shows no respect for Chagossian self‑determination?

[Rosie Duffield MP @RosieDuffield1]

Just a reminder. While #Mandelson enjoys tax payers' money for a job which comes with a luxury lifestyle, I was 'investigated' for 13 months, kept from promotion, and excluded by @UKLabour for liking tweets by @Glinner and expressing my view that only women can have a cervix...

[Ian Shorten @IanShortenUK]

Just heard Martine Croxall
@MartineBBC
on
@BBCNews
report that UK has "fallen to 71st place in the global corruption index". A quick search on Transparency International website reveals this is FAKE NEWS. It's "Corruption PERCEPTIONS Index", and UK is 20th/180 scoring 70/100

[Daniel Hannan @DanielJHannan]

Some basics about Chagos for BBC reporters, Sky anchors and others coming new to the debate.
1. The Chagos Islands lie half-way between Africa and Indonesia, and host a key Anglo-American military base on the main island, Diego Garcia
2. France ceded the archipelago to Britain in 1814 separately from Mauritius; the islands were always a distinct territory, though, lacking suitable facilities, their administration was sited in Mauritius
3. To put the issue beyond doubt, Mauritius permanently renounced any claim to the islands in 1965 in return for a cash payment from Britain
4. It eagerly trousered the money, its first post-independence PM, Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, explaining that he had been glad to sell any theoretical right to “territory of which very few people knew, which is very far from here, and which we had never visited”
5. Mauritius is indeed 1337 miles from the islands, and began to press its claim again only when it grew closer to China in the early 2000s
6. The barrister it hired was Philippe Sands, a co-founder of Matrix Chambers and a close friend of Keir Starmer’s, who has always been cagey about what conversations they have had about Chagos
7. Far from providing a mandate for the deal, the Labour manifesto explicitly promised the opposite (see graphic)
8. Starmer justifies the surrender by pointing to a non-binding resolution by a UN court, which included a Russian and a Chinese judge, and whose jurisdiction had been expressly denied in disputes between Commonwealth or former Commonwealth states
9. In November, a different UN body issued another non-binding resolution, this one ordering the transfer to be halted, but Labour did not change direction
10. The party may have a guilty conscience, for it was Harold Wilson’s government that removed the 1800-odd inhabitants from the islands after 1968 to make room for the base
11. Chagossians, who now number around 10,000, do not see themselves as Mauritians and overwhelmingly oppose the transfer
12. British and American generals have expressed reservations about the deal, warning that a future Mauritian government might lease adjoining islands to unfriendly powers
13. The base has proved its strategic value many times, lying as it does lies within reach of four of the seven global choke points that funnel maritime traffic: the Bab-el-Mandeb, the Straits of Hormuz, the Malacca Straits and the Cape of Good Hope
14. Mauritius has no navy and admits it cannot protect the territory
15. At the same time, it wants commercial fishing in the matchless marine conservation zone around the islands
16. A Freedom of Information Request shows that the payments to Mauritius will total £34 billion
17. Mauritius says that this money will wipe out its national debt and still allow tax cuts
18. Opponents of the Bill want Chagossians themselves to decide the issue in a referendum
19. If the deal falls, Britain will be under a moral obligation to allow Chagossians to settle the outer atolls (see video in next post)
20. Providing for a permanent settlement will cost (on the government’s figures) one sixth or (on the actual figures) around one fiftieth as much as Labour wants to hand to Mauritius
21. The transfer cannot go ahead without both parliamentary ratification and the formal approval of the US, neither of which has been secured