Peter Matza

RTs not necessarily an endorsement, Views entirely my own

[Yotam Ben Ami @ybenami]

You don't blame Ben personally? Absurd. He's old enough and has access to information and to books. If he chooses to hate on his own people without even bothering to educate himself, OF COURSE he's to blame.

In unrelated news, Ben & Jerry's has been black listed in this and many other Jewish homes for years now.

[Alex Gandler @AlexGandler]

I met Ben once. We were seated at the same dinner table.

At first, we did not recognise each other. Neither of us had any idea we would end up at the same table.

I asked him where I knew him from. He replied, “Ben, from Ben & Jerry’s.”

I smiled and said, “Nice to meet you. I’m Alex, Deputy Consul General of Israel to the Southeastern United States.”

This was at the height of the Ben & Jerry’s Israel controversy. I decided not to raise politics, out of respect for our gracious host. But I was also biding my time, because I suspected he would not be able to resist bringing it up.

About an hour into dinner, he came over to talk.

I saw it as an opportunity to understand where he was coming from, to explain a few things, and to keep the conversation as civil as possible. And to be fair, it was civil. He was pleasant, curious, and polite.

But quite quickly, I also realised he was completely ignorant about Israel.

He had never visited the country or the region. He had basic facts wrong, not only about the narrative, but about the foundations of the conflict itself: the makeup of the countries involved, the history, and the deeply rooted reasons each side sees the conflict the way it does.

For him, it was simple: there are people who appear oppressed, so someone must be the oppressor.

I do not blame Ben personally. He is a businessman who sells ice cream. Why should he be expected to understand Israel, the Middle East, or geopolitics?

The real problem is with those who treat him as an authority.

The media gives him a pedestal to speak about issues he clearly does not understand. And that is the absurdity of it all: taking an ice cream salesman and presenting him as a voice of moral clarity on one of the most complex conflicts in the world.

[Chelsea FC @ChelseaFC]

Bobby was one of our greatest goalscorers, the holder of the record for the most Chelsea goals for 45 years until his 202 were overtaken by Frank Lampard in 2013. 💙

[Peter Matza @PeterMatza]

@JChimirie66677 Spot on, Jim

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

A Furore That Was Whipped Up. That Is What Alexis Boon Called It.

Henry Nowak died in handcuffs on a Southampton street. The Prime Minister said he felt sick watching the body cam footage. The Commons Speaker ordered the government to make a statement. The chief constable of the force responsible described the national outcry as a furore that had been whipped up.

Alexis Boon, chief constable of Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary, spoke publicly for the first time today. He apologised for his officers handcuffing and arresting Henry. He said Henry could not be saved. He said his force had been subjected to unfair criticism. He said he does not accept the term two tier policing and does not recognise it. He will not resign.

The University of Reading evaluated Hampshire's mandatory Inclusion Matters diversity course, completed by 6,250 officers and staff. The findings were published by the force itself. Nearly twenty percent of officers said they felt they would have been rejected for saying the wrong thing during the training. Nearly fifteen percent said that if they made a mistake it would have been held against them. Fifteen and a half percent felt controlled and pressured to be certain ways. The University noted that individuals who did not respond well to the course may benefit from further intervention, monitoring or coaching.

Read that final observation carefully. Officers who retained their own judgment during diversity training were to be monitored, further intervened upon and coached until they responded correctly. The training was not designed to inform. It was designed to condition. Hampshire's own commissioned research documents that conditioning precisely.

The Metropolitan Police has gone further. It commissioned HR consultant Shereen Daniels to write a structural review of systemic racism within the force titled 30 Patterns of Harm. The Metropolitan Police described it as a key document in its race action plan. In a section on neutrality Daniels writes that neutrality is not neutral. That it reflects dominant norms, particularly whiteness. That claiming neutrality is claiming distance from bias but that distance is not real. That neutrality is a myth. The Metropolitan Police told its officers they could not be neutral because of their whiteness.

Officers trained that neutrality is a myth, that their own whiteness prevents impartiality and that failing to respond well to diversity training would result in monitoring and coaching arrived at the scene where Henry Nowak lay dying. They were not neutral. They had been trained not to be.

Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said policing had been infected by an extremist ideology that calls itself anti-racism but is in fact racist itself because it urges ethnic minorities to be treated more leniently. He said the doctrine is enshrined as official police policy and in his view contributed to officers prioritising the allegation of racism above saving a young man's life.

That is the argument Alexis Boon refuses to engage with. He apologised for the handcuffs. He described the outcry as a furore. He said he would not resign. He did not address the Inclusion Matters course whose own evaluation shows officers were afraid to say the wrong thing. He did not address the neutrality document that told his officers their whiteness prevents impartiality. He did not address the training that the University of Reading documented and that his force commissioned.

Henry Nowak is not a furore. He is an eighteen year old boy who died in handcuffs on a Southampton street while his killer chose his food in a police kitchen. The furore is the appropriate response to that. The chief constable who cannot see the difference has not understood the question.

"Alexis Boon said his force had been subjected to unfair criticism. He said he does not accept the term two tier policing and does not recognise it. He will not resign."

[Julian Jessop @julianHjessop]

"UK construction output falls at fastest pace for six years"

The recent slump in the PMI is mainly due to the fallout from the Middle East crisis, but the sector has been struggling ever since the summer of 2024... 🤔

Housebuilding in particular has been persistently weak.

[Conservatives @Conservatives]

BREAKING: Even Keir Starmer's Chief Secretary Darren Jones admits he doesn’t have confidence in Rachel Reeves to grow the economy.

Text messages continue to reveal what Labour will tell Peter Mandelson, but refuse to admit to the British people.

[Nick Timothy MP @NJ_Timothy]

The murder of Henry Nowak shows how law enforcement is corrupted by political correctness.

And it's far from the only case.

We need to dismantle the whole structure of identity politics - and return us to equality before the law.

[Vodka & Seledka 🇬🇧 @seledka_vodka]

.@KemiBadenoch's instinct that Britain should reject identity politics and return to equality under the law is hard to disagree with. Doing this properly doesn’t need oppositional rage.

The progressive politics imported from the US and accelerated after George Floyd's killing in 2020 - then embraced by governing elites and institutions - did real damage. It smuggled in anti-white racism and a bigotry of low expectations against ethnic minorities, the politics of grievance that now has us discussing slavery reparations in a country that helped lead global abolition. That despicable accommodation with separatism dilutes something the West fought over a century to establish: single-tier citizenship, the same standing for everyone under the law.

But undoing identity politics doesn't mean pretending race and ethnicity don't exist. And it doesn’t mean we should be barred from talking about race, ethnicity and colour.

For example 👇🏻

White working-class boys lag badly in school attainment; so do black Caribbean pupils; Chinese Brits and Brits of North African origin score much higher. These are facts worth examining openly - figuring out which disparities owe to discrimination and which have nothing to do with it, rather than defaulting to racialised interventions.

Equally, black men in Britain face roughly double the prostate cancer risk of other men. Starting PSA screening at 45 for that group, or adjusting sickle cell protocols, isn't "racial preference" in the old divisive sense. It's the same standard of care applied with clear-eyed knowledge of who gets ill how.

This is cool-headed normalcy, not cold rage. And there's the difference. @Nigel_Farage's response to the killing of Henry Nowak - urging "pure cold rage" - is what we should reject. Kemi called it out correctly: Farage is playing the same identity-politics game, just flipping the victim script.

Common sense doesn't generate clicks and won't build a protest party. That's precisely why it takes courage.

[Baa Ram Ewe 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🐑🐷🦃🚜 @ShepherdWales]

Kemi is spot on here.

The sad truth is that BLM set the U.K. back decades imho

During Covid, when we were supposed to be locked down, and it was ok for BLM to protest a police killing in the States - with Labour politicians marching with them and talking at protests, that was when the perception of two tier policing started imho.

[Marcos Agustín @marcosagusstinn]

The UK is pulling in a disproportionate share of European capital.

Dealroom data shows the UK has raised $13.9bn in 2026 YTD, equal to 48% of all European VC funding, far above its long-run average of 35.5%.

UK startups raised $23.6bn in VC funding in 2025, up 35% from 2024 — the first annual increase in four years and the UK’s third-highest year ever for VC investment.

London has also regained its position as Europe’s leading tech hub, overtaking Paris in Dealroom’s 2026 Global Tech Ecosystem Index, driven by AI and deep tech investment.

The UK now has a tech ecosystem valued at around $1.2tn, more than 200 unicorns, and remains Europe’s strongest venture capital market.

[Britain Unbound @BritainUnbound]

REJOIN SINKING IN POLLS

The Rejoiners are having an atrocious week. Yesterday @LordAshcroft released his latest polling on EU sentiment:

61% - Euro obligation unacceptable
66% - any increase in membership fee unacceptable
67% - would have to be a referendum

[Colin Brazier @ColinBrazierTV]

The Novak family made clear that the police got things wrong, and spelled out how with infinite dignity.
Police double-standards are an entirely legitimate subject for public debate.
As someone who 'took the knee' for the discredited BLM movement (which sought to abolish prisons and defund law enforcement) you are in no position to criticise anyone for politicising a death in police custody.
As a politician struggling to hold onto office you are entitled to play every card at your disposal.
But this is amoral and grotesque.

[Cut My Tax @CutMyTaxUK]

The OBR has admitted that its prediction that the British economy would expand by 2% in 2025 was "too optimistic", partially because it underestimated the negative impact of Rachel Reeves' decision to impose a large increase in employer NICs.

The amount of money the government is borrowing is also £60bn higher than the OBR predicted, which is truly shocking given the vast increases in taxes imposed by Labour.

[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

[Peter Matza @PeterMatza]

@Soros_Media @KemiBadenoch Yes, she did.

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

Every life matters.

One law. One standard. For everyone. 

This is about justice, for Henry, for his family and for all our children. They deserve better.

[Peter Matza @PeterMatza]

@GreenBin69 @peg_roger @KemiBadenoch Neglected? Scotland? Barnett pays their bills

[Julian Jessop @julianHjessop]

FYI, the usual suspects are still circulating this chart as evidence of the "huge economic damage" done by Brexit.

My thread below explains why this is misleading, starting with the Italian and Spanish data... 👇

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Violence is not the answer. And history proves it. King won because he built a coalition so broad and so morally unanswerable that the political cost of resistance exceeded the cost of reform. The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were won in Congress through persuasion and documented evidence. The footage of peaceful marchers being beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge did more for civil rights than anything Malcolm X said or did.

And critically King was fighting explicit legal segregation written into law. The fight for Henry Nowak is different. It is a fight to name and dismantle an ideology embedded in institutions by people who will use any disorder to justify keeping it there.

Southampton last night gave them exactly what they needed. The cameras moved. The questions stopped. Henry's name is already disappearing from the headlines. That is what violence produces. Not concessions. Cover.