Dr Edith Conn OBE DL JP

Chair @Crimestoppers Patron @SheinsprAwrd High Sheriff 2008 Vice-Lord Lieutenant 2014-17 Doctorate @boltonuni

[Ben Brittain @BenABrittain]

Profound and moving monologue from Trevor Phillips - one of Sky’s greatest assets and the country’s increasingly bravest journalist.

[Mcr South Central Foodbank @MSCFoodbank]

Preloved school uniform needed:
White polo shirts
White school shirts
Grey or black skirts
Grey or black trousers
Black or blue coats

WE CAN NOT ACCEPT ANY BRANDED OR LOGOED ITEMS

Contact Emily for more details: 
[email protected] 
0161 226 3413

[Crewkerne Man @CrewkerneMan]

Incredible clip: Kemi Badenoch takes apart a hard-left, pro-Palestine agitator, stands her ground, and makes clear she’ll defend British Jews without apology.

Serious steel on show here.

Don’t mess with Kemi 💪🇬🇧

[Kosher @koshercockney]

Remember when the Met Police threatened someone with arrest for being “openly Jewish” because it would antagonise the Pro-Palestine marchers?

We saw this right at the start of the marches.

Well since then we’ve had a march almost EVERY Saturday in London.

A march involving people that are antagonised by the sight of someone being openly Jewish.

Keir Starmer, Sadiq Khan or Mark Rowley could have put a stop to these marches. They didn’t. They’ve let them go on.

Starmer even “recognising a State of Palestine” while Hamas still rule Gaza and also refuses to proscribe the IRGC.

These marches clearly were a danger early-on to anyone openly Jewish if the Met Police were willing to arrest Gideon.

Two years later people are now being stabbed in broad daylight for being openly Jewish.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

The Man Nobody Is Talking About. His Name Is Sir Philip Barton.

Buried inside Tuesday's committee testimony, beneath the headlines about constant pressure, bullying and secret job searches, is the detail that may prove the most consequential of this entire affair. It concerns not Olly Robbins, not Morgan McSweeney, not even Keir Starmer. It concerns the man who was there before all of them. The man who said no. The man who then left his post eight months early.

Sir Philip Barton was the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office when Peter Mandelson's appointment was announced in December 2024. He was, in other words, the most senior civil servant in the building at the precise moment the machinery of state was being directed to place a man with documented links to Russia and China into the most sensitive diplomatic posting in the Western alliance.

What Robbins told the committee on Tuesday is this. Barton pushed back. When the Cabinet Office argued that vetting Mandelson was unnecessary, that a peer and Privy Councillor did not require developed vetting, Barton refused to accept it. He insisted that vetting was a requirement. He had to be, in Robbins's own words, very firm in person. He also voiced reservations about the appointment to Jonathan Powell, the National Security Adviser, reservations that were noted and not acted upon. He was worried, Robbins suggested, about exactly the same reputational risks that had been detailed to the Prime Minister before the appointment was announced.

Then Sir Philip Barton left his post. Eight months before his tenure would otherwise have concluded.

The question Richard Foord put to Robbins on Tuesday was the right one. Why did Barton's tenure end early? Robbins said he did not know. He suggested ministers may have felt it was time for a change. That answer is not an answer. It is the absence of one.

Consider what the timeline now shows. A senior civil servant pushes back against the appointment, insists on vetting when the Cabinet Office wants to bypass it, raises reservations with the National Security Adviser, and departs eight months ahead of schedule. His replacement arrives to find the appointment already treated as a fait accompli, the vetting process under constant pressure from Downing Street, and the question of outcome entirely subordinate to the question of speed.

If Barton was removed because he stood in the way of this appointment, then Robbins was not the first civil servant sacrificed to protect it. He was the second. And the question of who else was moved aside, overruled or silenced in the months between December 2024 and the moment the security services finally said no, becomes the most important question this affair has yet produced.

Starmer sacked Robbins for following the rules. The Foreign Affairs Committee will now call Barton to give evidence. What he says will either confirm what the timeline already suggests or provide an alternative explanation that the evidence does not currently support.

There is a pattern here that goes beyond process failure. Process failures are random. They point in different directions. What this affair has produced is a series of events that point consistently in one direction. Officials who comply are retained. Officials who push back depart. The security services are bypassed. The vetting is treated as an administrative inconvenience. And the one question nobody at the top of this government will answer is why this appointment, this man, this post, mattered so much that every obstacle was removed to make it happen.

Barton apparently asked that question. He left eight months early. The country deserves to know why.

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

“We have a Prime Minister and a government in power who are making decisions in the interest of their own clique within their own party."

~ David Davis MP 🎯

[Tim Farron @timfarron]

In 1945, 300 Jewish children who survived the Nazi death camps came to Windermere, where they were given a welcome beyond their wildest dreams.

This story and its legacy feel more important than ever as we seek to tackle poisonous antisemitism and welcome those seeking refuge.

[J Stewart @triffic_stuff_]

CONFIRMATION STARMER LIED! 🤥

Starmer KNEW about Mandelson’s FAILED security vetting… then LIED to Parliament and the public!

In February, when grilled by Kemi Badenoch at PMQs, Starmer looked her dead in the eye and confirmed the official security vetting had revealed Mandelson’s ongoing Epstein relationship. He boasted “due process was followed” and that vetting had “given him clearance”.

He even claimed he’d seen what the files said.

Yesterday in the Commons? Complete U-turn. Starmer now says he “had not seen the file” on the security vetting, that he was “staggeringly” kept in the dark about the failure, and that officials overruled it without telling him.

He’s thrown civil servants under the bus, sacked Olly Robbins, and is desperately rewriting history while the whole scandal explodes.

The man is a shameless liar and totally unfit to be prime minister, not that we needed any more evidence of that!

[Kosher @koshercockney]

STARMER EXPOSED

Starmer was so determined to appoint Matthew Doyle (another friend of a PAEDOPHILE ) to a top ambassadorial role… that he ordered it to be kept SECRET from the Foreign Secretary.

A disgusting insult to the victims of sexual offenders

[Howard Beckett @BeckettUnite]

Morgan McSweeney telling Sir Philip Barton, the former top civil servant at the Foreign Office, to bypass security for Mandelson’s appointment:

“Just F…ing approve it”

Anyone still believe McSweeney had his phone stolen?

[Rt Hon Nadine Dorries @NadineDorries]

Lock him up.

[Skint Eastwood @Skint_Eastwood1]

🚨 “I Don’t Recognize Our Country Anymore” – Douglas Murray’s Furious Rant on Britain’s Surrender to Jihad Marches and Two-Tier Policing 🔥

Douglas Murray is furious at what Britain has become: a country that no longer feels like its own, where Islamist extremists are allowed to parade through London every weekend calling for jihad, praising Hamas terrorists, and openly inciting violence against Jews, all while authorities turn a blind eye.

He’s outraged by the shocking double standards and the decades of weakness that enabled this cultural surrender.

“I don’t recognize our country anymore. I don’t understand why we have given in to Islamists who parade in London, calling for jihad and praising Hamas, praising terrorists. They hate Britain just as much as they hate Israel.”

“Why is it that if you call for violence against Jews day after day on the streets of London, that’s A-OK with the Metropolitan Police? But if Jews want to congregate in central London, apparently it’s not OK?”

This betrayal isn’t accidental.

“It’s come about because of a
generational cowardice by politicians of all parties and by the Metropolitan Police and others.”

Britain has conceded far too much to those who despise its values and its people.

How much longer? Enough is enough.

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

John McDonnell, "What we've seen is No 10 overriding, interfering, pressurising civil servants, we can't go on like this"

"Keir Starmer's office controls everything, he wasn't listening to any of us"

"As soon as Mandelson's name came into the frame I told Keir Starmer if you appoint this person, people will think you've lost all sense of judgment"

"Keir Starmer never listened, what happened McSweeney took control"

"No leader should allow that to happen"

[Jonathan Sacerdoti @jonsac]

The 17-year-old boy who on Saturday broke a London synagogue’s window and then lit and threw a fire bomb through it, has pleaded guilty to arson.

District Judge Nina Tempia freed the synagogue arsonist on bail, allowing him to walk free from the court. Why?

“I didn’t know it was a synagogue… I genuinely thought it was an empty building” the boy claimed, in a prepared statement read to the court. Look at the photo – architectural menorah relief sculpture, Hebrew writing – and ask yourself if that’s likely to be true.

Besides, which buildings is it OK to throw firebombs through the window of?

[Trisha Posner @trishaposner]

💥 Breaking: UK Counter-Terror Police just arrested seven men in a plot to launch a terrorist attack on the Jewish community — foiled just hours before it was set to happen.

Iranian nationals. On British soil. Targeting Jews.

This is not “isolated.” This is the deadly escalation we warned about. While politicians lecture about “Islamophobia,” Jewish lives are literally in the crosshairs — again.

How many more plots are already in motion?
British Jews are under siege. Time to stop the denial and protect them — or admit the failure is deliberate.

https://t.co/AnlmcdamWO

#Antisemitism #JewishSafetyUK

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Scathing form Labour veteran John McDonnell

"Many of us remain bewildered why Mandelson's appointment was made despite the many warnings"

"Isn't the reality this: when he sought to be leader with very little base in the Labour party he became dependent on McSweeny, Mandelson and Labour Together to fund his campaign:

"And when he became PM the reward for McSweeny was control of No 10"

"And for Mandelson the highest diplomatic office"

"And the unspoken message for civil servants: what Mandelson wants Mandelson gets"

"This has damaged the party"

"I urge him, I urge him, I urge him, to take steps to clear this toxic culture out of our party"

"And have an independent inquiry into Labour Together"

[Saul Staniforth @SaulStaniforth]

Susanna Reid lays it out. Keir appointed Mandelson despite knowing everything about him, he claims he didn't know Mandelson had failed the vetting, which means he never followed it up & never asked about it, & finally we know no.10 did know months ago so someone is lying

Damning

[Alexandra @Alexandr4Denman]

More webs broken down! It seems that Starmer cannot get out of this Mandleson scandal! Listen to this

[Don Keith @RealDonKeith]

🚨 Keir Starmer caught red-handed lying to the British public…again.

Olly Robbins admits the PM personally rammed through Peter Mandelson’s appointment — bypassing normal security vetting.

This proves Starmer lied about the whole process.

[Kathy Gyngell @KathyConWom]

Norway collected £50bn from North Sea oil and gas last year.

We collected £4.4bn, having taxed our own producers into closure in pursuit of a #netzero fantasy.

I cannot think of a cleaner example of a government failing its people @Keir_Starmer and @Ed_Miliband

https://t.co/qNr40cl0xZ