To Sweat The Assets?

No, of course Jess Phillips did not threaten to resign over the appointment of Peter Mandelson. She did resign after having been gazumped by Harriet Harman, but even that was not because of the Paedophile Information Exchange, which has become background noise, like Kemi Badenoch’s having told LBC that she was “born in a country that was 50 per cent Muslim”, even though her British citizenship depended on her having been born in the United Kingdom before Margaret Thatcher had abolished birthright citizenship. Badenoch may have been naturalised, and as a Commonwealth citizen she would in any case be eligible to vote and stand in elections in this country and to hold office all the way up to Prime Minister. But that was not how she presented herself until 28 April 2026.

Far from the Conservatives’ having any objection to Commonwealth voting, their only gain in 2024 was Leicester East, Bob Blackman at Harrow East received the highest vote share for any Conservative candidate in the country, he was the only Conservative elected with an absolute majority, and he was one of only three Conservative MPs to be re-elected with increased majorities. Blackman has repeatedly been sworn in as an MP on the Bhagavad Gita, and at the House of Commons he hosted Tapan Ghosh, who was at least as violently opposed to Christians in Bengal as he was to Muslims.

Badenoch and Phillips are of one mind in wishing to ban under-16s from social media, lest they discover that, for example, Britain’s projected spending of 10.6% of GDP on welfare was lower than in much of Europe, with more than half of it going to the recipients of what was nevertheless the lowest pension of any comparable country, and with two in five Universal Credit claimants in work, such that the State was subsidising low pay by corporations that paid kings’ ransoms at the top. By such means as to avoid most or all taxation, of course.

If, as Wes Streeting would have it, social media were comparable to smoking, then would Phillips or Badenoch consider herself powerless to stop under-16s from smoking in her home? Would she have much sympathy with any adult who professed such impotence? These comparisons reinforce the point that the responsibility is parental. The technology is available, and few parents of under-16s grew up offgrid. They did, however, grow up without the digital ID that everyone would need to make this ban work. And that freedom is worth passing on.