John Willcocks

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

When You Can't Beat Reform, Change The Rules. Labour Just Did.

There is a line in a democracy that, once crossed, changes everything. When those in power begin adjusting the rules of the game to determine its outcome, the game is no longer democracy. It is managed succession. That line was crossed again on Tuesday night.

Two days before the Makerfield by-election, Labour rushed a change to the mayoral voting system through the House of Lords. Regional mayors will now be elected using the supplementary vote system rather than first past the post. The change applies immediately. It will govern whoever replaces Andy Burnham as Mayor of Greater Manchester if he wins on Thursday and stands down.

The government's defence is that it is simply restoring the system used before Boris Johnson changed it in 2021. That argument requires the public to believe that a change Labour could have introduced at any point in two years of government became urgent on Tuesday evening, forty eight hours before the vote that triggers the election it is designed to affect.

Lord Hayward, a Conservative peer and experienced pollster, was precise in the Lords. There is no other justification for the haste, he said, other than that it solves the Labour Party's problems and prevents Reform winning a mayoralty. Not clumsy. Not rushed. Designed.

The mechanics explain why. Under first past the post, Reform could win the Greater Manchester mayoralty on a plurality of votes in a fragmented field, precisely as it won all eight council wards in May's local elections with around fifty percent of the vote. Under the supplementary vote system, voters express a first and second preference. Lib Dem and Green voters, given a second preference, will direct those votes to Labour overwhelmingly. The change does not affect Thursday's by-election. It affects the mayoral contest that follows it, constructing an anti-Reform coalition from the second preferences of smaller parties that Reform itself cannot access.

Lord Jackson identified the wider implication. This is potentially a strategy for a progressive alliance being rolled out ahead of a general election, he said, with the aim of locking out the Conservatives and Reform from power. Burnham's allies have already confirmed he would scrap first past the post nationally in favour of proportional representation. The supplementary vote is the local pilot for a national project. Pool second preferences, lock out the right, govern indefinitely on a minority of first preference votes.

This is not the first time. Earlier this year Labour delayed local elections after the Electoral Commission stated explicitly that the justification was not legitimate, that extending mandates damages public confidence and creates a conflict of interest by allowing those in power to decide how long they may remain there without consent. The Commission's objection was noted and ignored. Reform demolished Labour anyway.

Now the same instinct has been applied to a different mechanism. Not cancellation this time. Electoral system change, deployed with surgical precision forty eight hours before the vote that triggers the election it is designed to affect.

Governments confident in their mandate do not need to change the rules two days before the ballot. They face the electorate and take their chances. The timing of Tuesday night's Lords motion is not a coincidence. It is a confession.

The voters of Makerfield vote on Thursday. The question of who governs Greater Manchester after that, and under what rules, was settled in the Lords on Tuesday. Nobody voted for that.

"Burnham's allies have already confirmed he would scrap first past the post nationally in favour of proportional representation."

[John Willcocks @real_johnw]

@imharrybenjamin @MBrundleF1 You’ve had a good couple of weeks Harry. ARDS passed at GW, getting to commentate on Lewis’s first Ferrari win. Buy a lotto ticket this week.
I did say we need more of you. 😉

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Every single person who still cringes at the memory of trying to bullshit their way through an interview or exam question: today, the slate is wiped clean. Set down your burden of shame. Nothing - nothing, I say - could touch this.

[John Willcocks @real_johnw]

@rick_29273 @JChimirie66677 @JohnHann04 What? Give them training and weapons?

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Every police officer in England and Wales is trained according to standards set by the College of Policing. It publishes a practice bank, a library of approved initiatives that forces across the country are invited to adopt. This entry appeared on March 4th 2026. Three months after Henry Nowak was murdered.

The initiative is Police Scotland's. The College of Policing's decision to publish it on its national practice bank makes it considerably more than that. The practice bank exists to share approved approaches with forces across England and Wales. Publication is endorsement. Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary needed no invitation. It had already built its own equivalent.

It describes an anti-racism training package delivered by Police Scotland through a consultancy called Mission Diverse. The training covers white privilege, white fragility, intersectionality, micro-aggressions and allyship. It was procured through a public tender process, approved by senior management and rolled out to the entire Police Scotland workforce. Over 2,300 officers and staff have received it.

Read the intended outcomes carefully. The training aims to increase the workforce's confidence in addressing racism and increase awareness of types of bias. Treating every member of the public equally regardless of which community they belong to or which accusation they make does not appear as an objective. Instead officers are taught that their own assumptions and instincts may be shaped by unconscious bias that disadvantages ethnic minority communities. That teaching produces officers who second guess their instincts when a member of an ethnic minority community makes an accusation. It produces officers who treat a racism allegation as the primary fact requiring response. It produces the officers who handcuffed Henry Nowak.

The document notes that some of the workforce initially felt uncomfortable with elements of the topics covered. The training overcame that discomfort. It made them more confident in understanding institutional racism. Less confident, apparently, in trusting their own judgment when a dying boy tells them nine times he has been stabbed.

This training package is described as untested in its outcomes. The College of Policing publishes it anyway. Police Scotland has rolled it out nationally. Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary had its own equivalent. The body cam footage of Henry Nowak's final minutes is the evaluation that Mission Diverse's online survey will never capture.

Nobody is investigating the training. Nobody is investigating the College of Policing's practice bank. Nobody is investigating the consultancies paid from public funds to embed this ideology into the minds of officers whose most basic obligation is to help a dying boy on a Southampton street.

Shabana Mahmood said there must be no two tier policing. This is another document that explains why there is.
https://t.co/k6k5ChnUNs

[Scotland’s Story @80_mcswan]

If you want Baroness Michelle Mone removed from the House of Lords and to repay the £136,000,000 owed to taxpayers, please RT!

[John Willcocks @real_johnw]

@afneil 😂👏

[John Willcocks @real_johnw]

@GeordieMoonboi @Inevitablewest It was on BBC news and Newsnight, ITV news.

[John Willcocks @real_johnw]

@LibertyNut1 A

[John Willcocks @real_johnw]

@_imey @JackBMontgomery Good catch. Thank you. Don’t trust anything on the www.

[John Willcocks @real_johnw]

@_imey @JackBMontgomery This is him

[John Willcocks @real_johnw]

@AllForProgress_ @grok is any of this verifiable?

[Right over Left Everytime @RightSide_Uk]

🚨 MPs’ renting scandal just went nuclear — and the snout-in-the-trough champion of the week is none other than Labour’s own Deputy Leader, Lucy Powell.
It’s now been exposed that a whole string of MPs have been renting rooms and entire homes to each other at full taxpayer expense. Powell raked in over £30,000 last year alone by renting out a room to another MP. Taxpayer-funded second homes, taxpayer-funded rents flowing straight into fellow MPs’ pockets — a cosy little Westminster property scam that makes the old expenses scandal look like pocket change.
This is the same Labour Party that lectures working Brits about “fairness”, “austerity” and “paying your share” while their own elite treat Parliament like a private members’ club with an unlimited bar tab on your dime. While British families are crushed by sky-high rents, energy bills and taxes to fund this circus, Labour insiders are quietly lining their nests by renting to one another — all perfectly “within the rules,” of course. Because in two-tier Britain, the rules are written by the grifters for the grifters.
Lucy Powell isn’t some backbencher caught with her hand in the till. She’s the Deputy Leader. The second most senior figure in Starmer’s government. The same government that’s busy hiking your taxes, slashing services and telling you to tighten your belt while they play Monopoly with public money.
This isn’t a mistake.
This isn’t an oversight.
This is systemic corruption dressed up as “MP accommodation.”
The silent majority has had enough of these champagne socialists treating the British taxpayer like a bottomless ATM. We pay for their second homes, their rents, their expenses — while our own kids can’t get on the housing ladder and pensioners choose between heating and eating.
We demand:
✅ Immediate full public audit of every MP’s property dealings and expenses — names, amounts, everything.
✅ Resignations for anyone caught in this rental racket — starting with Lucy Powell.
✅ A complete overhaul of the MPs’ expenses system — no more second homes, no more self-dealing, no more pigs at the trough.
✅ Real consequences for the entitled elite who think the rules don’t apply to them.
Labour isn’t just failing Britain.
It’s looting it — one taxpayer-funded rental agreement at a time.
Starmer Out.
Powell Out.
The whole rotten Westminster cartel out.
The British people are watching. And this time we’re not forgetting.
🇬🇧 #MPSRentingScandal #LucyPowellExposed #TwoTierBritain #LabourGrift #RestoreBritain #PutBritainFirst #MPsExpenses #BritainIsBroken #EndTheCorruption

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Chris, my honest answer is that none of them is fit for the moment. I've written on Streeting's financial entanglements, Rayner's bloc dependency and the unclosed HMRC file, Burnham's record on Operation Augusta, Reeves and the budget that rattled the bond markets and the taxation policies that are strangling small business and pricing a generation out of work, Lammy's refusal to proscribe the IRGC while Iranian agents surveilled British Jews and his assault on the right to trial by jury, Cooper who promised to smash the gangs and has watched small boat crossings continue while writing cheques in foreign aid to countries that persecute women and minorities, Phillipson's destruction of the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act. There isn't a senior Labour minister I haven't examined and found wanting. The problem isn't the individual. It's the political culture that produced all of them simultaneously. The country doesn't need the least worst Labour leader. It needs a general election and a political class capable of honest reckoning. We have neither at the moment.

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

ONE WOMAN TRIED TO STOP BRITAIN'S BIGGEST CORPORATE COLLAPSE

Emma Mercer was new to her finance job at Carillion, one of Britain's biggest construction companies. Six weeks in, she found something that should have stopped everything. The numbers in the company accounts were made up. Debts were hidden. Profits were invented. Projects worth hundreds of millions of pounds were lying on paper.

She told her boss. He ignored her. She told the CEO. Same. She went to HR because she had nobody left to tell. A board member later put it in writing. Emma was a whistleblower who did not feel she was listened to.

She was right about every single thing.

So what did the board do? They cancelled the independent investigation and gave the job to KPMG @KPMG instead.

The same company that had been checking Carillion's accounts every year for 19 years and calling them healthy. The same company being paid £29 million by Carillion to do it.

MP Frank Field @frankfieldteam said it out loud in Parliament. KPMG were asked to mark their own homework.

They gave themselves top marks.

Eight months after Emma raised the alarm, Carillion collapsed. January 2018. The biggest company bankruptcy in British history.

Here is what that meant for real people. 3,000 workers lost their jobs overnight. 28,500 people saw their pensions cut. There was a £2.6 billion hole in the pension fund that ordinary workers had paid into for years. Taxpayers spent £150 million just keeping hospitals, schools and prisons running while the mess was cleaned up.

Meanwhile, the former Finance Director Richard Adam sold every share he owned on the exact day the 2016 annual report was published. He walked away with £750,000 in his pocket. The shares were worth nothing a few months later.

The regulator @FRCnews took five years to do anything. When it finally did, KPMG was fined £21 million, the biggest fine ever handed to an auditor in Britain. It also came out that KPMG staff had faked meeting notes and changed spreadsheets to fool the regulator when it came to inspect.

The lead auditor was banned from the profession for 10 years.

The fine was still less than what KPMG was paid by Carillion.

One woman walked into a new job and told the truth in her first six weeks. She was ignored and pushed aside. The executives who ignored her kept their bonuses. The auditors who backed them up kept their fees. The workers who had nothing to do with any of it lost their jobs and their pensions.

Rachel Reeves @RachelReevesMP said it at the time. The board claimed they never saw it coming. Emma Mercer saw it in a month and a half.

This is how British corporate accountability works.

Sources:
BBC News @BBCNews
The Guardian @guardian
Financial Times @FT
Private Eye @PrivateEyeNews
Accountancy Age @AccountancyAge

[John Willcocks @real_johnw]

@alinavisooo_net World’s best looking chippie?

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Starmer and Hermer Built the Machine Together. Now They Run the Country.

In 2007, two barristers worked without pay on a case that would change the legal landscape for every British soldier who had served in Iraq. Keir Starmer and Richard Hermer appeared as interveners in Al-Skeini v Secretary of State for Defence, representing eleven human rights organisations including Amnesty International and Liberty. Their argument was that the European Convention on Human Rights should apply to British forces operating overseas. They lost in the Court of Appeal. They appealed to the House of Lords. They lost again. But the legal principle they had argued for eventually prevailed at the European Court of Human Rights, and what followed was the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, sixty million pounds of public money, seven years of investigations, and not a single prosecution. The soldiers it pursued were, in almost every case, found to have acted properly.

Starmer believed in it enough to do it for free. Johnny Mercer, who spent years dismantling the consequences, put it plainly. Starmer had insisted on doing it for free. That is not the behaviour of a barrister following the cab rank rule. That is ideological conviction.

Hermer's conviction, it subsequently emerged, was not without financial reward once the machinery was running. Documents obtained by the Daily Telegraph show that having helped establish the legal architecture pro bono in 2007, Hermer then used that same architecture to pursue Iraqi claims against British soldiers at £450 an hour, fifty percent higher than the only other KC involved in the group action. He set his success fee at the maximum level permitted, one hundred percent of his normal rate. The MoD's own lawyers challenged his fees as excessive and said he was too junior to command that rate. He is thought to have earned around six figures from the broader group action. The claims he was pursuing were eventually ruled to be deliberate lies. The soldiers were fully exonerated.

Sergeant Richie Catterall had been cleared of wrongdoing by the British Army in 2003 for a fatal shooting in Basra. The Army found he had acted in self-defence. The legal precedent Starmer and Hermer established triggered two further investigations spanning thirteen years. A 2016 inquiry again concluded he had acted in self-defence and found a false document had been created to shift blame onto the military. Catterall was finally exonerated. He told the Telegraph he was gutted that Starmer had helped bring the case against him and that the Prime Minister owed him an apology.

Starmer is now Prime Minister. Hermer is now Attorney General, appointed by Starmer personally, elevated to the House of Lords specifically for the role, chosen over Emily Thornberry who had held the shadow brief. The former head of the Army, General Sir Peter Wall, has said Hermer's role in the Al-Sweady claims was tantamount to treason. A former commanding officer of 22 SAS said Hermer must step down. The Bar Standards Board has been asked to investigate. Nigel Farage has reported Hermer to the House of Lords standards commissioner.

The Troubles Bill that is now subjecting Northern Ireland veterans to the same lawfare is not an accident of policy. The process that drove Fred, a special forces veteran, to attempt suicide after his medical records were handed to terrorists' families was not an oversight. The machine that cost sixty million pounds and produced no prosecutions was not a mistake. Starmer and Hermer built it together, one working for free out of conviction, the other later working for maximum fees out of the same conviction, and now both occupy the positions from which they can ensure the machine keeps running.

[John Willcocks @real_johnw]

@hol40900 What’s happened to the Labour MPs questions regarding the Mandleson appointment? Spineless grifters.

[John Willcocks @real_johnw]

@ukwip They need to rename this as ‘Primev Ministers Avoidances’ .
He hasn’t answered a single question.
The Speaker is deficient.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Starmer Was Warned About Russia and China. He Proceeded Anyway. Tomorrow He Calls It Unforgivable

Tomorrow Keir Starmer will stand at the despatch box and tell Parliament it was unforgivable that he was not told Peter Mandelson had failed his security vetting. He will present himself as a Prime Minister betrayed by his own system. He will speak of outrage and of lessons learned. He should not be allowed to do so unchallenged.

Tonight the Telegraph has disclosed that Starmer was handed a due diligence report before the appointment was announced in December 2024. That report cited concerns about Mandelson's business interests in China, his connections to a Russian conglomerate whose chairman was an ally of Vladimir Putin, and his continued involvement with that organisation well after Russia's annexation of Crimea. The Telegraph has separately established that Mandelson was targeted by Russian intelligence for decades. Starmer read the report. He proceeded with the appointment.

The UKSV vetting process subsequently reached the same conclusion. Senior Whitehall sources have told the Telegraph that the vetting findings largely restated the security risks already drawn to Starmer's attention. One source put it plainly. The reality is that Starmer had already been warned about the major risks and he had waved them away.

Downing Street's response is to draw a distinction between due diligence and developed vetting, arguing that the two processes are separate and carry different weight. The distinction is technically correct and substantively irrelevant. A Prime Minister who reads a report flagging China and Russia concerns about a candidate, appoints him regardless, and then expresses staggering outrage when a more rigorous process reaches the same conclusion, has not been kept in the dark. He has chosen not to look.

Consider what followed that choice. Mandelson was not merely appointed. He was granted Strap Three clearance, the highest level available to the Foreign Office, giving him access to information that could put intelligence sources at risk if leaked. A man targeted by Russian intelligence for decades. A man whose China connections alarmed American senators sufficiently to refer a dossier to the FBI. A man who had maintained a relationship with a convicted paedophile long after conviction and shared government information with him. That man was given access to material that could endanger lives. And the Prime Minister who had read the warnings says he was kept in the dark.

Lord Glasman, one of Starmer's own, sent a memo to Morgan McSweeney after Trump's inauguration warning about Mandelson's Epstein connections. The 2023 dossier from the security services warned Labour shadow ministers about his links to hostile states. The due diligence report warned about China and Russia. The vetting process said no. At every stage, at every level, from the security services to his own party's senior figures, the warnings arrived. At every stage they were set aside.

Tomorrow's statement will be framed as an act of transparency. It should be read as an act of audacity. A Prime Minister who received multiple warnings about a candidate's security risks, appointed him anyway, granted him access to the most sensitive intelligence material available, and then sacked the civil servant who followed the rules, is not a man who was let down by his system. He is a man who used his system to get the outcome he wanted and is now asking Parliament to believe he had no idea what that outcome would be.

The country was promised full transparency. What it will receive tomorrow is a carefully constructed account of ignorance from a man the documentary record shows was warned, repeatedly and formally, before he made his choice.

He read the warnings. He waved them away. The despatch box will not change that.