🚨NEW: Reform will increase the tax-free personal allowance to £15,000 pounds in our first budget.
A £500 tax cut for the average worker, £1000 off for a working couple.
Everything is getting more expensive, good jobs are being lost and high streets hollowed out.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Tomorrow we’re in Wolverhampton to set out how Reform UK will fix it.
Tonight the Cabinet Secretary gave her annual lecture on how she will ‘rewire the state’. In the front row, being lectured: Andy Burnham and Louise Haigh.
That tells you all you need to know about who is really in charge of Whitehall. The Prime Minister has even put the Cabinet Secretary in charge of his own office and gave her a desk right outside his study.
Look, we've heard Antonia Romeo’s words all before. Fulton. Next Steps. Francis Maude. In 2018 the Civil Service's chief executive even stood on the exact same LSE stage, waffling about “profound, lasting, transformational change”. Sound familiar?
This time we get a “burning platform”, three tired slogans, a tweaked Civil Service Code in the spring with a fresh focus on ‘Pride’, and a review document sometime next year.
By now, any serious observer knows that Whitehall will never reform itself. And asking someone who joined the Civil Service straight after university – and even proudly states “I never left” – to reform the system she owes her entire career to is nonsense.
What is needed is ministers with a democratic mandate, the willingness to deliver real change, and a plan ready on day one of government, not year four.
Reform has that plan: real policy on pay, promotion and performance. We publish it shortly.
132 days ago, trying to get elected, Andy Burnham said he’d deport this vile rape gang leader.
And yet he’s still here.
Burnham must think we’re fools.
July 1: Andy Burnham asks the Home and Foreign secretaries to "review all possible options" to deport the ringleader of notorious Rochdale grooming gang leader Shabir Ahmed.
November 10: His official spokesman says he has "no update on that individual case. It is one for the Home Office. We are exploring every option in that case". @GBNEWS
https://t.co/bFs8mMhEHD
It shouldn’t have had to take a public shaming for Gordon Brothers to pay suppliers and restock the shelves of a decent business.
Their conduct is disgraceful.
Burnham has released ANOTHER 650 criminals early from jail today.
Some were convicted of firearm offences and domestic abuse.
The tagging system Burnham says will keep the public ‘safe’ from early release offenders is a joke.
The government’s tagging contractor, Serco, failed to meet its targets for 15 months straight.
They count an attempt at tagging as sufficient for these targets.
More than 5,000 offenders walked free from prison untagged, despite court orders requiring them.
Where tags are fitted, and there is a breach, police rely on Serco EMAILING them.
These emails are only sent during working hours.
If a breach happens after 6pm, the authorities are only alerted the following working day.
Even then, senior police officers say they receive hundreds of breach notifications a day.
Labour is simply emptying prisons onto the streets.
Reoffending rates are at record highs.
All this because the Tories imported 5 million net new people and built just 455 net new prison places to cope.
We will deport the 10,000 foreign nationals in our jails to make space, and end early release for good.
We will put the safety of the LAW ABIDING British people first.
Kemi Badenoch says trying to save the 12,000 jobs at Poundland is “bonkers”.
Imagine you’re one of the families facing an uncertain Christmas. Or one of the suppliers, worried about being paid for stock delivered or sitting in your warehouse. Or even the landlords, concerned their properties will soon by empty for months and rent unpaid. How do you think they view it?
Here are the facts. Today we learnt from the company itself that it is in fact in the midst of a pretty successful turnaround. The company is not just solvent, but looks set to make an £18-20m underlying profit this year. Yes, it has debts and operates in a very challenging market, but it’s moving in the right direction. Fair play to the management and staff for what they’ve achieved this year.
As a result there are multiple bidders keen to discuss purchasing the business as a going concern.
And yet Gordon Brothers appear to be resisting, intent on shutting down the business and selling off its parts.
One of the bidders informed me tonight that Gordon Brothers “do not seem interested in doing a deal”. They are not responding and are not paying the suppliers.
In stopping the flow of money to the business shelves will empty, sales dry up and stores resemble ghost towns.
A business that took years to build could be destroyed in a few weeks. In retail, even if you opened a store a week, it would take a decade to reach 600 stores.
A decent business which brought value to people struggling with bills will become a failed one.
It’s not right that a foreign investor can cut off funding to a solvent business while offers are still on the table. As I’ve said before, not only will the workers and suppliers lose out, but the taxpayer will be on hook for tens of millions in benefits claims. This is not in the public interest. We should do our utmost to find an alternative.
That Kemi Badenoch doesn’t understand or even care about this says a lot about her.
Thank you to all our Armed Forces personnel – regulars, reserves, veterans and their families – who go above and beyond in their service to this country.
‘WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.’
But are we?
My full documentary on the First World War.
I’d be grateful if you could share it, particularly with younger Britons.
Today we honour the memory of those who gave their lives in the service of our country.
Each life honoured on every memorial in every city, town or village was once full of the ordinary moments and quiet dreams, of good days and bad days, of celebrations and disappointments. Of family and of community. They didn’t stand apart from us, but among us, ordinary men and women who chose or were asked to shoulder an impossible burden.
They laid down their lives for Britons they would never meet, for generations yet unborn, for a nation that would not exist as we know it absent their incredible courage.
We remember their gallantry. We revere their legacy. We salute them in their eternal glory, and we recommit to building a nation that is stronger, prouder, kinder and freer than ever before.
On Remembrance Sunday Lisa Nandy has claimed that no one in Britain has had to fight a war since WW2.
What about the 7,193 British soldiers who have sacrificed their lives in conflicts ranging from the Korean War to Afghanistan?
While she erases their service, the country will never forget their bravery.
Remembrance Sunday is a sacred day, not to be cynically used by Labour to justify closer ties to the EU. Whatever the merits of their argument - and I believe reopening the Brexit wars is both a colossal waste of energy and a strategic disaster when national sovereignty is more important than ever - this is not the day for it.
It’s disappointing that Nandy and Andy Burnham, who presumably agreed to this, have failed so badly to meet the moment.
On Remembrance Sunday Lisa Nandy has claimed that no one in Britain has had to fight a war since WW2.
What about the 7,193 British soldiers who have sacrificed their lives in conflicts ranging from the Korean War to Afghanistan?
While she erases their service, the country will never forget their bravery.
Remembrance Sunday is a sacred day, not to be cynically used by Labour to justify closer ties to the EU. Whatever the merits of their argument - and I believe reopening the Brexit wars is both a colossal waste of energy and a strategic disaster when national sovereignty is more important than ever - this is not the day for it.
It’s disappointing that Nandy and Andy Burnham, who presumably agreed to this, have failed so badly to meet the moment.
Today @NewarkTownFC recreated one of the great stories of the First World War, the Christmas Day 1914 Match, playing Emmendingen from Germany.
Private William Setchfield, a Newark lad serving on the Somme, played in goal. His Dad, a local cobbler, had sent him the ball just before Christmas.
That night William sat in the trenches and wrote a letter to his brother Alfred in Newark describing that truce and the fact that he had his photograph taken with the Germans. It was one of the most remarkable moments of the war, and perhaps the most famous football match ever played.
We will remember them.