Robin Dundas

Also @ZetlandEstates

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

I sat next to you in Parliament when you promised your own independent rape gang inquiry. You did the media rounds and took the credit. Boasted about the headlines. Accepted the political gain.

What did you do?

Nothing. You delivered nothing. You never mentioned it again. I pushed you to act, you weren’t interested.

You broke that promise.

You even insulted our own independent inquiry as a ‘waste of space’.

It is filthy politics, and you should apologise for it.

[Pete North @FUDdaily]

Labour's collapse trajectory is closely mirroring that of the Tories. Lame duck PM followed by moonshot deadbeats to keep the cart rolling. Meanwhile, I get a sense that people expect a Reform government will break this cycle. Not so. You can expect a Reform government to be received by the media as politically significant as the Brexit vote, and it will send them into hyperdrive. You recall how they mobilised to get rid of Johnson from day one. Every slip-up and unforced error will be pored over on a daily basis.

Here, Reform will have to hit the ground running. Voters will expect some immediate big gestures, and the blob will have conniptions. It's when they start the ball rolling on ECHR exit that we get a full repeat of the Brexit era shenanigans, including large lefty street protests.

Here we should recall that ECHR withdrawal is not exclusively a domestic affair. It's pretty seismic in terms of European politics, and especially so with the Northern Ireland settlement. To date, I have not seen anyone in the know wargaming how this plays out, but you can expect the parties in Northern Ireland to play it for what they can get out of it. Farage will have to decide where it's going to be an inelegant technical compromise like the backstop, or whether he's going to collapse the GFA. He will likely play it safe. He does not want his entire administration consumed by Northern Ireland politics. The problem there is that messy technical compromises beget more messy technical compromises.

Regardless, the ECHR clean-up operation requires a tranche of repeals and amendments, which will not have an easy time in the Lords, or the Commons for that matter, even with a thumping majority. A lot of this gets bogged down in parliamentary process. It's a lot of work and a lot of parliamentary runtime. Meanwhile we can expect a torrent of legal challenges, possible even a civil service strike, with charities and NGOs sticking their oars in, ensuring it is never out of the news. Whatever happens, it will not be boring.

This will be against a backdrop of generally negative economic news, just because of the times we're in, along with a steady attrition of Reform MPs losing the whip, either because they're not on board or because they have their fingers in the till. It gets even messier if Reform is in a coalition with the Tories.

Before you know it, Reform is up to its neck in complex constitutional questions, for which it is spectacularly underprepared, while it still has to get on with everyday administration and more fundamental economic reforms. From day one there will be a countdown to Reform's first budget, which will be highly controversial.

The shopping list of things that need to get down is really quite extensive, in which Reform will have to prioritise how it spends its limited political capital. Even with a thumping majority it still won't have an unqualified mandate. Just as Labour has a large majority now, there are things it would like to do but simply cannot get away with if it wants to get re-elected.

In order to steer this, you need a leader who can confidently and competently explain what is happening, and that won't be Farage. Much of it will be delegated to whichever vaguely sentiment individual they kind find who they'll groom to replace Farage from day one. Maybe Yusuf or Jenrick. Farage will be seen as a weak and indecisive PM who will make regular u-turns when he can't take the heat - and he'll routinely undermine his own ministers because that is his leadership style.

Essentially, any government attempting to depart form the current political settlement is going to be chaotic, especially when it's made up of political novices. It's going to have to get some big wins in the bank. There is zero chance of them being re-elected if the boats don't stop. It must shore up its own base or be mauled to death by the media with nobody willing to defend them.

Regardless, I simply do not see Farage making it through a full term, simply because it's more pressure than he can handle. It requires actual work, for which he doesn't have the stamina or the temperament. As such, anyone replacing him will have to be popular in their own right, but that's quite a problem for Reform in that they simply don't have any heavyweights. That brings us to roughly where we are now with Labour... a lame duck PM with no obvious successor, no political capital to spend, and bogged down in technical constitutional messes of their own making, while living standards continue to deteriorate.

While there is much Reform could do to put the country back on the right track, no least ditching Net Zero and abandoning renewable energy, these policy corrections will take a minimum of five years to yield any noticeable benefits. They could cuts some taxes here and there, but that's ultimately going to demand cuts to spending and it's hard to see where those cuts will come from. As they discovered with DOGE, you can't just swing the axe.

Doing the job well would be a tall order even for competent people working to a plan, but I can very easily see this all disintegrating within two years. Meanwhile, we see the beginnings of a radical left wing counter movement as the old parties struggle for relevance. Essentially, any hope of returning to some from of political stability in the near future is for the birds. Brexit was described as an "all out war" but that will look tame by contrast with what is to come. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the EU and Ireland also stick their oars in to frustrate a Reform government, and the British government will need nerves of steel.

Were it that Britain had a system of executive powers akin with that of the USA, it would be a lot easier to make an impact, but I strongly suspect a Reform government will be worn down to impotence by intransigent bureaucracy and legal process. The establishment isn't going to roll over and let a party like Reform unpick the liberal order. This will be a fight to the death, and I don't think Reform has what it takes. It's going to require meticulous policy and planning, and they've already left it too late to develop it. ECHR withdrawal, for starters, is no walk in the park and its architects are woefully naïve. It takes skill not to walk into political ambushes, but populism simply doesn't think that far ahead.

[Pete North @FUDdaily]

This is a moment of sheer desperation for Labour. They are completely spent. Their electoral position is irrecoverable. They're scrabbling for ideas, but they're in seriously deep shit because there is nothing whatsoever in their intellectual canon (insofar as there is one) that wouldn't make matters a magnitude worse. Their every meddlesome intervention is wholly unwelcome, counter-productive, and far too late to appease even their own supporters.

As with the Tories they have reached the point in office where there is no point in them being in office, but will not relinquish it so can only make themselves even more unpopular. That will just make the final implosion even more spectacular.

[Pete North @FUDdaily]

You will recall when Boris Johnson took office, there was much jubilation and cheer. Many hopes were invested in him. I was non-plussed because I knew full well that behind the bluster, there was nothing approaching a coherent intellectual platform.

People will still make excuses for him though. I mean, sure, I don't think any government would have fared very well in the circumstances of Covid, and the media wanted him gone from day one, but that wasn't the real problem. The Tories genuinely had nobody better than Boris Johnson - even though half the party didn't want him. Intellectually, the party was already spent in 2019, just as Labour is now. After all the promise of Brexit, all they had to go on was "green recovery" bullshit and weak "levelling up" shtick. Once Johnson was exposed as a phoney, the party never recovered.

This is where we're at with Labour. Starmer never had anything going for him to begin with - especially not charisma, and only occupies Number Ten by way of a complete collapse of typical FPTP dynamics. 2019 marked the beginnings of a period of protracted political instability. All of the prerequisites for any kind of recovery demand the incumbent parties abandon their flagship policies and ideologies. They made Reform inevitable, if only as a bleaching agent. The real question now is whether Reform will fare any better in office should it win the next election.

One thing Reform has proven adept at is capitalising on the broad disaffection with politics, and has been the beneficiary of the voter rebellion, but it's still not winning by way of advancing a particular policy platform. We know the rough ballpark on immigration policy (which stops far short of what is necessary) but we don't know much else.

We can make educated guesses on the basis of things Zia Yusuf has said, but there's nothing bankable. I don't think Danny Kruger speaks with any authority on what a Reform government would do. We know they have vague plans for reforming the civil service (for what little that will accomplish), and they'll scrap Net Zero (as is necessary) but then they have to get down into the weeds of policy to repair the social contract. That means a series of hard choices and controversial decisions, and I honestly don't think they have the minerals.

Where it comes unstuck is their determination to leave the ECHR. This essentially requires a fundamental overhaul of the constitution, and I don't think they have the talent to pull it off in the face of a full scale revolt by the media, the unions, the Lords, the blob etc. There's a lot of preparatory work that needs to happen before pulling the pin on ECHR exit, not least having a plan B for Northern Ireland.

The right tends to prefer simplistic "rip off the band aid" approaches, but this process requires a level of intellect and sophistication that Reform simply doesn't have. They will likely create a political crisis for themselves within a year.

At that point, if not sooner, the cracks will begin to show. Key Reform figures aren't in agreement on very much. There is a rhetorical gulf between on Islam between Pochin and Cunningham. There is nothing much ideologically to unite the disparate base comprised of Tories and lapsed Labour voters. Farage will have to play it safe on welfare reform and will have to work hard not to be seen as another Tory austerity party. As such, there is no hope of them addressing the structural economic imbalances.

As it happens, I think we are still looking at a hung parliament and a Reform/Tory coalition, which comes with its own problems, and Reform may struggle to repeat their thumping victory in the locals as voters realise what they're getting when they vote Reform. Farage has used the local elections as a vehicle for national politics and now their councillors are fending for themselves with no direction or leadership.

Essentially. I don't see Reform putting an end to this period of political instability, or performing well enough to obtain a mandate in their own right following 2029. At best, they will temporarily arrest the decline, but could just as easily fall apart they way Labour and the Tories did in office. When there is no intellectual foundation, and nothing to unite them, they will very rapidly run out of steam, unable even to repair the messes they make for themselves. The chaos could even result in a massive swing to the left should something radical emerge out of the blue.

To my mind this is the reason people should be thinking about building alternatives for the long term. Rupert Lowe has already said he's off if his vanity party doesn't win in 2029 (of which there is zero chance), so that leaves the SDP as the only serious non-establishment party. Too much hope is invested in correcting the course of the nation in 2029, when all the signs point to a decade or more of political turbulence, to which no party really has any answers.

For my part, I honestly don't see a political solution emerging before things start to unravel on a more serious level. Even at peak performance, without walking into ambushes like ECHR withdrawal, I don't see any party of the right being sufficiently serious to repair things in time. We have to get used to this instability being the new normal.

[Robin Dundas @Ronaldshay]

IPCC Admits Apocalyptic Climate Scenarios Are “Implausible” – Meaning Most Media Scare Stories Over Last 15 Years Are Officially Junk https://t.co/vou4IIrDm0

[Pete North @FUDdaily]

Ok I'll bite. British culture is diverse. But you know it when you see it. It's pub culture. It's Wimbledon. It's airshows and steam rallies on a Summer day's. It's boating on the Thames. It's fish and chips on the harbour. It's eighties nights and rock clubs. It's garden fetes and village galas. It's bingo halls and snooker clubs. It's 40's revival weekends. It may be subjective but it's all around you if you open your eyes.

It struck me recently that a lot of British culture is based around nostalgia, but it's more than that. We come together to enjoy our common heritage, marvel at our accomplishments and remember our fallen.

I tend not to see minorities at airshows, battle reenactments and steam rallies because minorities aren't meaningfully part of that story. I see sons with elderly fathers, and fathers with young sons, passing on knowledge about our country. But I'm always surprised to see a south Asian or an African. They're just not interested.

But then I wouldn't expect to see minorities at such events because they're not exposed to it. Our schools would rather teach black history than English history. It teaches our young people that our history is something to be ashamed of - and something to be contextualised, scorned and dismantled.

But then so many minorities have no interest in integrating at all. I walk through Bradford and see women in burkas and men in pyjamas who can barely speak English and prefer not to - who go to places of worship to hear sermons in another language. They're nothing to do with me.

Pakistanis have been on Bradford for more than fifty years, and whatever assimilation process that might have occurred appears to be in reverse. They don't dress like us, don't speak like us, don't interact with us and don't participate. They don't participate in our local politics. They colonise it. They will turn out in their hundreds in solidarity with Palestinians, and bring their tribal bickering over Kashmir to our streets.

Contrast that with Eastern Europeans who have effortlessly integrated, and are now part of us. Part of our social fabric. They come to our rock clubs and raves, they drink in our pubs, they assimilate into our politics. They're our friends and family now. They're compatible because their places of origin share similar foundational values. Democracies striving for equality.

But what has Pakistani/African/Arab culture contributed to British life? Honour killings, acid attacks, grooming gangs, deep rooted misogyny, suicide bombs, cousin marrying, FGM, forced marriage etc. And for what? They weren't needed or wanted. And now we have parallel cultures that don't interact, and lawless cities that no longer look or feel British in any meaningful sense.

Though it's not entirely the fault of minority groups that they don't integrate. It's a two way thing and it's human nature to seek out the familiar. Most of us don't really want anything to do with your culture and we'd prefer it if y'all weren't here - even if we keep that sentiment to ourselves. It's not a racial thing. It's not personal. Xenophobia = evolutionary instinct + experience. Y'all just don't fit here, spend most of the time denigrating and complaining, and seem intent on turning our country into the sort of corrupt basketcase slums you hail from. So you're not really welcome.

It might be different if we could see any kind of effort to integrate and if we felt like you appreciated being British as much as we do, but when we see Muslims taking to the streets to stand with Hamas and call for Jihad, how can we not conclude we have an enemy in our midst?

Ultimately a functioning country is about kinship. The more alien cultures we import, the more diluted our commonality - and the more fragmented we become, to the point where we're just a rabble of competing tribes, where there's no sense of obligation to each other. A failed state basically. Those who won't integrate need to be gone.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Criminally Negligent. Andrew Neil's Words. Britain's Reality.

Andrew Neil does not use language carelessly. Writing in the Daily Mail this morning, he describes Britain as stuck in an energy emergency with an oil and gas policy bordering on the criminally negligent, delivered by a bunch of clueless inadequates at the tiller. He is not reaching for effect. He is delivering a verdict. And the evidence he marshals is unanswerable.

The Strait of Hormuz has been closed for the first time in history. Oil is heading toward two hundred dollars a barrel. Britain is facing the worst energy crisis since the Yom Kippur War of 1973. The International Energy Agency has described the supply disruption as the largest in history. And the government overseeing this catastrophe has spent the past year doing everything in its power to ensure Britain would be maximally exposed when it arrived. It closed North Sea oil and gas production. It borrowed against already strained public finances. It built an economic strategy on OBR forecasts that the energy crisis has already rendered obsolete. And it put the man most responsible for Britain's energy vulnerability, Ed Miliband, in charge of the response.

The Miliband contradiction has been hiding in plain sight for months. He stood at the despatch box during the energy debate last year and warned that Britain was a price taker not a price maker in international fossil fuel markets, leaving it exposed to their volatility. He was right. He was also the man who ensured that exposure would be as severe as possible by closing down the domestic production that could have cushioned the blow. The North Sea fields that could have been producing. The coal beds that remain untouched. The nuclear capacity that was decommissioned in pursuit of net zero targets that now look like a luxury policy designed for a world that no longer exists. Miliband diagnosed the disease and administered the poison.

Rachel Reeves now faces the consequences. The fiscal headroom she has been defending against every request for defence spending, every demand from the Treasury and every warning from military chiefs, is being wiped out not by defence costs alone but by the energy price shock her own government's choices made inevitable. Her foundations, as Neil puts it, are built on quicksand. The borrowing costs are rising at the fastest pace since the Liz Truss mini-budget. Foreign creditors are watching. The bond markets are watching. And the Chancellor is discovering that the numbers she has been citing as proof of fiscal responsibility were always dependent on a stable world that this government's foreign policy paralysis helped to destabilise.

Neil makes one observation that connects the economic catastrophe to the political one with surgical precision. A stronger Prime Minister would have fired Miliband. He is right. The man who led the Cabinet revolt against supporting America, who blocked the use of Diego Garcia, who has spent a year dismantling Britain's energy independence and who stood at the despatch box admitting British households would pay the price, is still in his post. Still in the Cabinet. Still in the room. The reason Starmer has not fired him is the same reason he needed a drone on his own runway before he would act, the same reason he consulted his team on minesweepers and the same reason Britain is now a diminished, exposed and strategically paralysed country being described in its own press as a nation of clueless inadequates. He cannot afford to. The coalition that put him in power will not allow it. And so the inadequates remain at the tiller while Britain heads for the rocks.

"Miliband diagnosed the disease and administered the poison. [...]. Rachel Reeves now faces the consequences."

[Jamie Snowden @jamiesnowden]

Delighted to see #SilverHill winning under a penalty @HerefordRaces with @samtwiston on board. #winner no 75 for the season. #TopTeam @Alexwalters89 @BetVictor

[Robin Dundas @Ronaldshay]

With Andrew arrested, today must be the perfect day to bury "bad" news and abandon the Chagos deal @Keir_Starmer @DanielJHannan

[Daniel Hannan @DanielJHannan]

CHAGOS: AN APPEAL TO LABOUR
There is, as I keep pointing out, no enthusiasm for the Diego Garcia surrender on the Labour benches. Its only supporters are Keir Starmer, Richard Hermer, Philippe Sands, Peter Mandelson and Jonathan Powell.
Even a month ago, Labour cannot have imagined quite how awful the politics would become. They are handing away a pristine marine conservation zone, betraying a dispossessed black population and paying billions of pounds more to Mauritius than it would cost to resettle the outer atolls with Chagossians.
Now they are ordering the eviction of those Chagossians who have returned home to stake their claim.
Think about that.
We won’t stop small boats in the Channel, but we lose no time in ordering the removal of British subjects from British territory.
We are slow and reluctant when it comes to deporting illegal immigrants, but we snap into action to evict British Overseas Citizens from a British Overseas Territory.
Labour friends, this is not why you went into politics.
You can see as clearly as the rest of us how shameful all this is. You know that, under any other Labour leader, the whole project would have been dropped long ago.
Well, here is your last chance. Donald Trump has given you a final off-ramp. For the love of justice and decency, take it. If that means replacing Starmer with someone more sensible, so be it.

[matrixbot @thematrixb0t]

A freedom of information request has revealed that, once again, the UK Met Office has been publishing temperatures from weather stations that don't even exist.

"The numbers were actually coming from a model that was inventing data from phantom neighbouring stations."

"This is the foundation of the UK's climate record."

[Dr Jennine Morgan @jemmm85517813]

People need to wake up before it is too late…CO2 is not the control knob of climate, it is not a pollutant. It was 1500 ppm when mammals evolved. It is now 420ppm & if it drops below 150ppm plants die..Then we have no photosynthesis, no oxygen & we all die. More CO2 has increased the green area of the earth by 5% & far from causing any problems for humans has helped increase crop yields & there is no evidence of any of the foretold disasters.
WE ARE BEING CONNED.
We do not need netzero which is destroying our economy.

[Iain Dale 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧 ⚒️ @IainDale]

It is clear from this that the Government has midled Parliament on the Chagos Islands. Surely they must now withdraw the Bill that is in its final parliamentary stages, no matter how embarrassing that would be.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Join Rupert Lowe in Restore Britain, because he is the only one who will actually do it!

[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.

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

The British Establishment has a simple rule:

The problem is never the problem. The problem is people who dare to point out the problem.

Grooming gangs, illegal immigration, terrorism, men in women's prisons, Net Zero.

Same playbook every time: "racist", "denier", "Nazi".

You'd think when you're calling a beloved children's author a Nazi, you'd maybe stop and pause. But no.

Another part of the rule is that no matter how right the "bad" people turn out to be, they remain tainted by having been right.

Feminists like JK Rowling were vilified for opposing puberty blockers being given to children. The government rowed back on the policy. But the women who spoke out against it are still considered bigots.

Grooming gangs turned out to be racist anti-white hate crimes. If this had been done by an invading army, it would be rightly treated as a war crime. But the people who covered it up and ignored it are still the "good" people and the people who complained about it are still the "bad" people.

The same is true of illegal immigration. Islamism. Net Zero.

And this is why the country is screwed. Because we live in a society where the golden rule is that you must tolerate the intolerable or you'll be made a pariah for caring about the safety of British women and girls, for wanting a cohesive society, for wanting a strong economy.

I've had enough of this and my sense is so have the British people. We won't keep quiet anymore. Call us all the names you want. It doesn't work anymore.

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

Over the last fortnight, we have had multiple abused women speak of how their rapists attempted to traffic them to Pakistan or elsewhere - they failed, thankfully. We’ve spoken to one woman where it was successful, but thankfully she managed to escape.

It comes up again and again and again. The same tactic.

So please just think about this.

We know that tens and tens of thousands of girls were involved in these gangs, hundreds of thousands.

On British soil, individually they were raped by hundreds of men. We are starting to understand the depravity. And that’s HERE. IN BRITAIN.

Please think honestly - what do you think is happening to these British women who were taken to Pakistan?

And I suspect it is many, many hundreds.

What does their life consist of in Pakistan, as you are reading this?

These men traffic the girls around Britain, over many decades, for sex and violence. Why wouldn't they take them back to Pakistan? Of course they did, and do.

I am urging the Government to confront the scale of this problem, and initiate, as a matter of urgency, a full and properly resourced national investigation into the alleged overseas trafficking of victims connected to organised sexual exploitation.

My motion urging that now has some Conservative backing, and even support from one Reform MP, Rosindell, and one Lib Dem MP. Northern Irish MPs are supportive. But we need more.

I have written to the Home Secretary, even questioned her in Parliament. I am trying everything to put this on the agenda.

What these women are going through in Pakistan will be far beyond the evil we can even imagine.

We need to act, now.

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

Good news. We've hit 50k on the petition in a matter of hours. We must save the rape gang court transcripts from destruction, and make them available to the public FOR FREE.

Let's get this to 100k today, and force a debate in Parliament.

Sign/share.

https://t.co/xaDrgSKpGc

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

Britain needs to understand the sophisticated level of coordination between the rape gangs - it goes far deeper than anybody realises.

A national crime network, of the most depraved kind.

Our inquiry is finding evidence of advanced links between dozens and dozens of towns and cities.

This is not simply dispersed groups of savages.

This is coordinated, right across the country. The tactics are well rehearsed, and well drilled. They know EXACTLY what they are doing.

Nothing is off limits to these people - nothing.

And there is ZERO appetite in Westminster or the media to even discuss it.

This is all so much worse than anybody knows.

[Dr. Bendor Grosvenor 🇺🇦 @arthistorynews]

Disraeli in 1872: ‘As I sat opposite the Treasury Bench the ministers reminded me of one of those marine landscapes not very unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest.’