PoliticsSense

Common sense views on politics & EU. #Brexit was inevitable.

[PoliticsSense @PoliticsSense]

Just in case Remainers didn't know what type of Remain they were voting for.

Merkel - November 2012

The EU will transform into a single nation—a superstate—“otherwise it will not work in the long term”.

[Charlotte Gill @CharlotteCGill]

Spanish sociologist awarded £1.5 MILLION in UK taxpayer funding to research LGBTIQ+ asylum policies

[PoliticsSense @PoliticsSense]

@ArticleSums @Planet_Belfast @DavidGHFrost Exactly. Where is this deep damage. Exports are booming #despiteReeves and GDP is similar #DueToReeves

[Ramon Agusta @ramonagusta]

"we've fixed the foundations" latest...

[Basil the Great @BasilTheGreat]

Migrant in Calais says he's coming to the UK to work in a gang

He says he's coming to sell drugs, fight, stab and shoot

This is who Care4Calais are bringing across to Britain

[Rafe Heydel-Mankoo @RafHM]

The Bank of England DELIBERATELY FIXED the fake "public vote" to remove ALL historical figures from bank notes & replace them with nature images

Freedom of Information requests by the Telegraph reveal the decision to remove historical figures was based on a "focus group" of a mere 119 people

The Bank LIED because it previously claimed the decision was based on a "public vote".

In truth, however, even this vote was FIXED. Instead of having HISTORY v NATURE, the bank deliberately split the "history" category into 3 sections: historical events, historical figures, architecture & landmarks.

That was the only way that "nature" could win.

However, of course bank notes always combine at least two of those history categories. For example: Churchill & Parliament or Wellington & Waterloo.

The Bank's actions are indefensible and questions should be asked in the House.

The Bank of England has clearly been captured by progressive woke ideology. A visit to the Bank of England with its permanent exhibition on slavery makes that clear

This is part of the wider war on British history. It's an attempt to create a NEW BRITAIN, based on ridiculous myths that "Diversity Built Britain" and that Britain has always been multicultural.

Remember: the Bank of England issued a 50p coin (held aloft by Rishi Sunak) which was imprinted with the nonsensical statement: "Diversity Built Britain"

Anyone who lived behind the Iron Curtain will find all of this eerily and scarily familiar.

The pulling down of statues, the renaming of streets and schools, the rewriting of history, denigrating heroes, changing bank notes etc....these were all tactics of the communists.

Severing the connection between a people and their history is the best way to demoralise a society and prepare them for the imposition of new myths.

Me on @GBNews:

[Imtiaz Mahmood @ImtiazMadmood]

Two days after Henry died Hampshire Police secretly recorded Digwa in a police van speaking Punjabi to his brother. Digwa admitted stabbing Henry. Discussed claiming self defence. Made zero mention of racial abuse. Not one word.

Hampshire Police had that tape.

They knew Digwa was lying about the racist attack. They had the evidence. They had his own words and then tried to smear Henry as the aggressor anyway.

Three days after his death their statement read “it was reported two men had been assaulted by an unknown man.” Henry was the unknown man. The boy bleeding out on the street. They flipped it.

Family complained. Statement changed. Then police told the family their NEXT update would again infer Henry was the initial aggressor. His family had to fight them a second time. While grieving their murdered son.

Then during the trial Hampshire tried to issue a statement telling the public to stop talking about it online. Calling it disinformation. The CPS had to step in. Told them they were about to collapse their own murder case.

This is the force that handcuffed a dying boy. Missed the murder weapon twice. Had a secret tape proving the killer lied. And still tried to bury Henry's name.

That's not incompetence. That's a machine protecting itself. At the expense of a dead boy's reputation and three officers are still on active duty. Not suspended. Treated as witnesses. To their own actions.

Hampshire Police didn't just fail Henry on that street. They kept failing him for six months after he died.

- @Banksycat

[Miss Jo @therealmissjo]

Do you want to know something interesting about the decision to remove Winston Churchill, Alan Turing and Jane Austen from bank notes?

Savanta, a market research company, was chosen to run a focus group.

The result of that focus group is that Churchill was “divisive”, Turing “an imperialist” and Austen “contentious and not representative”.

Yet that focus group had only 119 people in it.

And only one person called Turing “imperialist”. Someone who probably did not even know that he was not only instrumental in the Allies winning WW2 but was a gay man who was chemically castrated to “cure him”.

Turing was left fat, flabby and so unhappy that he carefully injected cyanide into an apple and ate it. He was found with half the apple by his side.

The Bank of England claims that the focus group was only part of its decision and it ran a broader public inquiry that favoured animals and flowers. Who did they ask? Primary school kids?

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Burnham Promised Affordable Homes. He Built Luxury Towers For Chinese Investors

Before Andy Burnham stood for Mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017 he was explicit about what he would do with the region's housing investment fund. He criticised public loans for city centre and luxury schemes. He promised to renegotiate the fund so it would fully focus on the long term goal of an affordable home for all. Here is what he actually did.

Burnham's Greater Manchester Combined Authority lent £578 million in public money to a single developer, Daren Whitaker of Renaker. In March 2024 Burnham chaired a meeting that approved £120 million in loans to Renaker companies in the space of one minute. Out of 11,000 homes built with that public money, 503 are classed as affordable. Less than five percent. Since 2020 Whitaker's personal fortune has grown from £140 million to an estimated £698 million, making him one of the wealthiest individuals in the North West. He briefly registered his residency in Monaco before switching it back to Britain.

A tribunal found that GMCA failed to obtain a statement of assets and liabilities from Whitaker before lending him the money, exposing taxpayers to a risk the tribunal described as potentially wiping out the public funds. Whitaker also received a £40 million dividend payout despite restrictions in the original loan agreement. The GMCA would not say whether it knew about or approved those payments. The terms of the loans remain secret. A Court of Appeal hearing on £140 million of those loans is scheduled for June 9. Nine days before the Makerfield by-election.

The China dimension is where the story connects to something considerably larger. The taxpayer backed developments were actively marketed to Chinese buy to let investors through Hong Kong estate agents. A marketing event was held in Hong Kong just weeks before the GMCA approved a £69 million loan for the Contour development. Hundreds of flats in taxpayer backed skyscrapers have been sold to Asian investors according to Telegraph analysis of Companies House filings.

Angela Rayner, then Deputy Prime Minister, was simultaneously telling the Telegraph that it was a real frustration that international investors could buy up houses before local people get a look in. Her government's mayor in Manchester was lending public money to a developer marketing those same homes to Chinese buy to let investors in Hong Kong. Labour was pledging a stamp duty surcharge on overseas landlords while its most prominent northern mayor was facilitating exactly the investment it claimed to oppose.

For Makerfield voters the question is direct. The constituency sits within a region where 18,000 people have no permanent address and one in 61 Manchester residents is homeless. The man asking them to send him to Westminster promised in 2017 to focus public money on affordable homes for all. He then lent £578 million to a developer who built luxury towers now owned by Chinese landlords, extracted dividend payments despite loan restrictions, and left taxpayers exposed without conducting adequate financial checks.

For Britain as a whole the question is broader. The pattern of accommodating Chinese financial interests runs from the super embassy in London to the spy trial collapse to Mandelson's undisclosed relationship with China's finance minister. The Renaker story adds a further dimension. Public money, lent without adequate due diligence, flowing into luxury developments marketed directly to Chinese investors, by the mayor now seeking to become Prime Minister.

The Court of Appeal will hear the case on June 9. The voters of Makerfield deliver their verdict on June 18. Both deserve an honest answer.

"Burnham's Greater Manchester Combined Authority lent £578 million in public money to a single developer, Daren Whitaker of Renaker."

[Allison Pearson @AllisonPearson]

Many suspected Lucy Connolly was a political prisoner.
Newly released documents contain shocking proof that Lord Hermer rushed Lucy’s “emergency” case through. Judges were told the required prison sentence.
Two-tier injustice 🚨
https://t.co/Y6CaZliNn3

[Reem Ibrahim @ReemAmirIbrahim]

How close is Britain to an IMF bailout?

The government already spends 8.2% of total expenditure on debt interest alone. The OBR says that without policy change, Britain’s ageing society will push borrowing to above 20% and debt above 270% of GDP by the early 2070s.

That’s a worse picture than the Green sovereign debt crisis in 2010, which resulted in 3 bailouts.

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

On June 6, 1944, Martha Gellhorn was sitting in a London briefing room when the news broke: D-Day had begun.

She had already been denied press credentials. The U.S. military had banned all female journalists from the front. Her editor at Collier's had quietly handed her D-Day assignment to someone else.

That someone else was her husband, Ernest Hemingway.

She got in a cab and went to the docks at Southampton anyway.

She talked her way past a military policeman by claiming she wanted to interview nurses aboard a hospital ship. Then she found a bathroom, locked the door, and waited in silence until the HMHS Prague was too far out to sea to turn back.

The Prague was the first Allied hospital ship to reach Normandy. In the dark water off Omaha Beach, Higgins boats ferried shattered men out to the ship. Gellhorn moved among them, helping carry stretchers, holding hands, recording everything. On June 8, she went ashore herself, one of the only civilians to set foot on that beach during the landing operation.

When she got back to England, military police were waiting on the dock. They arrested her, revoked her accreditation, and sent her to a nurses training camp outside London as punishment.

She went AWOL within 48 hours.

She went on to cover the Battle of the Bulge. She was among the first journalists to enter Dachau after liberation. She reported conflicts on six continents over six decades, never once embedded, never once asking permission.

Hemingway flew to Normandy on a press plane. Full military clearance. Official credentials. He watched the landings from the air and filed his dispatch.

He won the Nobel Prize.

You know his name. You probably didn't know hers until just now.

[Peter Bleksley @PeterBleksley]

If you don’t follow @JChimirie66677, you should. Another great read…

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Shabana Mahmood Called George Floyd's Death An Unspeakable Outrage. She Called Henry Nowak's A Political Grandstanding Opportunity.

On June 4th 2020, four days after George Floyd died in Minneapolis, Shabana Mahmood wrote to her constituents. She described his death as an unspeakable outrage. She shared the anger of the Black Lives Matter movement. She condemned Donald Trump in the strongest possible terms. She pledged to ensure Black voices are heard at the heart of our democracy. She signed it with a Black Lives Matter hashtag.

This week Shabana Mahmood stood at the despatch box and told the House of Commons there must be no two tier policing. She said the police have a sacred duty to act without fear or favour. She warned that anyone using Henry Nowak's murder to stoke division should be rejected.

Henry Nowak died on December 3rd 2025. Mahmood said nothing for days. The Commons Speaker had to order the government to make a statement. When she finally spoke she described the national outcry as political grandstanding and accused those naming the problem of stoking division.

Four days after George Floyd died she had already written to her constituents. Four days after Henry Nowak's killer was convicted she had to be ordered to speak by the Speaker of the House.

The letter she wrote in 2020 is worth reading carefully because it is the most precise document available for understanding what happened this week. She writes that her work deeply reflects the cause for social and racial justice. She writes that she will carry on working to ensure Black voices are heard at the heart of our democracy. She writes that she wants her work to continue to be reflective of black and ethnic minority experiences in Birmingham.

Not all voices. Black voices. Not all experiences. Black and ethnic minority experiences. That is the Home Secretary who told Parliament this week there must be no two tier policing. Her own letter is a precise description of two tier political engagement. One standard applied to George Floyd. A different standard applied to Henry Nowak.

The progressive institutional machinery was operational within hours of Floyd's death. The hashtag was ready. The language was ready. The political network was ready. Mahmood's letter was part of that machinery. It was produced within four days because the machinery runs automatically when the case fits the framework. Black Lives Matter had been founded in 2013. By 2020 it had dozens of local chapters, a global network, corporate donors worth hundreds of millions of dollars and political allies embedded across every major Western government. When Floyd died every node of that network activated simultaneously. Mahmood's letter was one activation among millions.

Henry Nowak's case does not fit the framework. His killer used the progressive framework as the murder weapon. His case does not vindicate the ideology of anti-racism training. It exposes it. And the Home Secretary whose entire political career has been built around that ideology found herself at the despatch box this week condemning its most visible consequence while declining to name its cause.

She wrote in 2020 that she would ensure Black voices are heard at the heart of our democracy. She has kept that promise. The question Henry Nowak's family is entitled to ask is which voices were heard at the heart of the institutions that trained the officers who handcuffed their son. The Hampshire Race Action Plan. The NPCC guidance. The College of Policing practice bank. The Metropolitan Police neutrality myth. All of it built by the same political framework Mahmood has spent her career advancing.

There must be no two tier policing. She is right. The letter she wrote in 2020 explains precisely why there is.

[PoliticsSense @PoliticsSense]

@romfordgeeza @julianHjessop @john4brexit @BritainUnbound "Easier to export to no trade deal USA than single market EU" that was what a number of goods exporters said to me in 2016. Nuts!

[PoliticsSense @PoliticsSense]

@romfordgeeza @julianHjessop @john4brexit @BritainUnbound I reckon NTBs were in place even when we were in the single market!

[Samantha Smith @SamanthaTaghoy]

Since Andy Burnham wants to be the next Labour leader, here’s a reminder:

Andy accused victims of Pakistani-Muslim grooming gangs of trying to “propagandise” the issue.

He tried to block the grooming gangs inquiry in Manchester and nationally.

He claimed that Pakistani-Muslims grooming gangs are a “thing of the past” despite clear evidence that little girls are still being victimised to this day, including in his local area.

And what does he call the LITTLE GIRLS who were raped under his watch?

Not children.
Not little girls.

“Young women.”

Even on the most basic level, Burnham tried to shift the blame onto victims and refused to acknowledge that they were children.

Countless little girls were raped, exploited and even murdered by Pakistani-Muslim grooming gangs, while powerful men like him turned a blind eye.

Andy Burnham belongs in prison, not Parliament.

And certainly not in 10 Downing Street.

[Catherine McBride OBE @CeeMacBee]

Hannan: 'As long as our leaders want, if only for emotional reasons, to keep open the possibility of re-entry, they will not grasp the regulatory or commercial opportunities that have waited, ungrasped, since 2016.'
🎯

Labour is edging towards full-throttle, Euro-delirium – but the Rejoiner case has never been weaker

https://t.co/DJs6n8pTqE

[Iain Cameron @theiaincameron]

The day I was personally mugged off by a member of the royal family - A true story

On a hot summer’s day in 1995, in a lavish garden in Fife, my supervisor and I were standing in a big hole in the ground. The hole had been dug some days previously for a swimming pool that was to eventually fill the sizeable excavation where we were now standing.

The garden, and accompanying estate, were the property of Henry Scrymgeour-Wedderburn, 11th Earl of Dundee, who had commissioned the swimming pool.

As we toiled in the blaze of the midday sun installing electrical cables for lighting, we saw Earl Dundee walking around with someone who looked very familiar to me. The pair walked towards us and engaged us in conversation. The Earl’s companion, a much older gentleman, regaled us with a tale of an eccentric man who used to go swimming in Hyde Park every day, rain or shine. After he’d finished his tale I piped up.

‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but you seem very familiar’, said I.

‘Oh?’ replied the man. He smiled and paused for a minute. ‘Do you have any money in your pocket?’

Thinking this was a very odd thing to ask, but aware of the peculiarities of the aristocracy (whom I thought this guy must have been a member of), I pulled out a 50p piece from my pocket.

‘You see that woman?’ he asked, pointing at the female face on the coin. ‘That’s my wife.’

[Kathryn Porter @KathrynPorter26]

@DavidGHFrost @ASI Not only do we have the highest tax burden but government borrowing is at record levels

Yet the economy isn't growing, unemployment is

@UKLabour always trashes the economy but this lot is doing it at an unprecedented rate. The UK will be bankrupt by 2029 at this rate

[Stuey Beef 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @stuey_beef]

Andy Burnham built his brand attacking “Tory crony contracts”.

Now we learn a company that gifted him £45,000 of glossy campaign videos has gone on to pocket more than £260,000 in contracts from his own Greater Manchester authority.

The GMCA insists there were “rigorous procurement processes” and that Burnham had “no role” in awarding the deals.

But the timeline is damning: first the free promotional videos for his 2021 and 2024 campaigns, then the taxpayer-funded work rolls in.

This isn’t about legality, it’s about judgement.

When you rely on a donor for your political image and then the same firm starts winning lucrative public contracts from the body you run, ordinary people see exactly what’s going on – it’s the establishment looking after its own again.

Burnham wants to pitch himself as the clean break from Starmer and Westminster sleaze.

Yet the moment you lift the bonnet on Manchester, it looks like just another Labour machine: mates, favours, and public money quietly changing hands while voters struggle with their bills.