Browsing, History

Good stuff at Prime Minister's Questions from Anneliese Midgley on the need to subject the security services to the Hillsborough Law, and from Florence Eshalomi on leasehold, but Keir Starmer made a highly sexualised (and desperately unfunny) joke, shouting it at a woman. Grok is the least of our worries, although that you would still be able to access it using a VPN is just an argument for doing nothing.

For example, since it is widely and easily ignored, why have a drinking age? But have you ever met an alcoholic who first got into the booze via low and no alcohol substitutes? Have you ever met a self-respecting 16 or 17-year-old who drank them? And how would a prohibition on their doing so, while giving them the vote, be enforced? Take a wild guess.

No one could mistake me for a Sixth Former if for some unimaginable reason I wanted to purchase such a product, but I could be any age when using the social media from which under-16s were to be banished. How could I confirm my antiquity? How do you think? So much for digital ID as purely voluntary. See also the requirements on company directors and on anyone needing to engage with the State.

So it turns out that Josh Simons did after all last more than four days as Minister for Digital ID. At 32, where does he find the time, what with the Reserves? Or have I missed something? And is he also the Minister for Artificial Intelligence? The use of that in the case of Maccabi Tel Aviv was unfortunate and requires some sort of sanction, but the banning of that club's infamous fans was more than necessary, as the longsuffering Police in Tel Aviv would confirm. Sir Andy Cooke, His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary, found no no malign intent, no antisemitism, no political interference, and no partiality, and he did not mention the word "Islamist". Shabana Mahmood has just lost her own and four other seats while ruling out the recapture of a sixth.

That that ban was "condemned across the political spectrum" is true only if those who most certainly did not condemn it are defined as off the political spectrum, recalling Tony Blair's definition of New Labour as "the political wing of the British people as a whole". When the existence of MPs in that position is acknowledged at all, then it is to castigate them for taking an interest in anything beyond the potholes in their constituencies. Oddly enough, no one has told Nick Timothy to attend to the potholes in West Suffolk ahead of the Police in the West Midlands. But then, as Special Adviser to Theresa May at the Home Office, he has been a sworn enemy of the Police for at least 16 years.

Timothy has teamed up with John Woodcock, to use his maiden name, to complain that politicians were being intimidated if anyone disagreed with them. They want all manner of action against "activist movements", meaning anyone outside the club. Timothy is described as "senior" even though he is a first term MP, although at 45 he has never worked outside politics. Woodcock came up through the NUS. Nuff said. Electoral Calculus weirdly lists West Suffolk as a Conservative hold while giving Reform UK a 61 per cent chance of winning it. Anyway, in 2024, Labour was only 3,247 votes behind Timothy for a seat that in 2019 Matt Hancock had held with a majority of 23,194, again over Labour. Now, Labour is nowhere. Having assumed no more opposition than that, Timothy feels terribly intimidated.

Another delicate flower of our politics is Steve Reed, who called the Police when a school in his constituency had marked a "cultural day" by handing out biscuits iced in the colours of the Palestinian flag, and who complains that, "The Police didn't even come when we called the Police. I had my neighbours out there shouting at them because they were scaring their children. I had a member of my family vomiting down the toilet in fear. Even though I was able to give the names of two of those individuals to the Police, nobody was ever prosecuted for it." The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps quakes in its boots even as it laughs with scorn at Omid Djalili of last September's Riyadh Comedy Festival, which was apparently not itself intended as a joke. A brutally repressive sponsor of terrorism on the streets of Britain, indeed.

Yet what do these fearful souls have to worry about? Of the 20 councillors who joined Reform today, five were Independents, including one in West Suffolk, but 14 were Conservatives 24 hours ago, and one was in the Green Party. And why not? The Greens have increased Brighton Council's surplus by the same £60 million that they have cut from services. Across the country, their councillors vote for austerity. A Portsmouth City Councillor of 30 years' standing, Jason Fazackarley, who had sat both as a Green and for Labour, moved in November from the Liberal Democrats, who had made him Lord Mayor, to Reform, following at least one other sitting Lib Dem councillor, Jeff Sumner of Burnley. From Labour to Reform defected, among at least five others nationwide last year, Councillor Mason Humberstone of Stevenage, who contested internal Labour Party elections on the slate of Morgan McSweeney's Labour Together. Reform expects to take the Stevenage parliamentary seat from Labour.

Reform's only Peer did not attend the Lords vote on Chagos, and as befits the party in which Boris Johnson's court has mostly ended up, at least one of its candidates at the forthcoming local elections, the Bangladeshi Addy Mo Asaduzzaman also for Portsmouth City Council, is a Boriswave immigrant who does not hold British nationality. While Reform's inquiry into vaccine injuries was being chaired by Nadhim Zahawi, on 20 January the electors of the Horsley division of Derbyshire County Council, and of the Amber Valley Borough Council ward of Codnor, Langley Mill and Aldercar, will have the opportunity to vote for Advance UK's Alex Stevenson, who was drummed out of the Conservative Party for having supported Andrew Bridgen's description of the Covid-19 vaccines as "the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust", and who was a mere 3,334 votes short of winning the Amber Valley parliamentary seat for Reform in 2024.

If Stevenson's showing, projected across the constituency, were half that, then Reform would be in serious trouble there. Expect a very great deal more of that sort of thing. The Conservatives, Reform, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon's Advance, the supporters of Rupert Lowe, and the keepers of the flame of Charlie Kirk against Israeli influence and "the Talmud", are set to field at least five right-wing candidates in dozens of constituencies, mostly marginals. In scores of seats, the difference between a Reform gain and not will come down to a tiny number of votes, but the Right is looking as fractious as the Left. For her endorsement, Lucy Connolly could name her price. And no doubt will.

Lowe does not want anyone who was not a British citizen to have the vote in the United Kingdom, but would that extend to dual nationals? If not, then there would be those who most certainly would say that. But if so, then the question of kosher and halal slaughter would recur as the question of people whose other nationality was Israeli. Lowe has never answered my question about this, although he does say frankly that he would ban kosher along with halal. Next up, the draft CPS guidance on ritual circumcision, which would already be prosecuted if only Muslims did it. Does Yaxley-Lennon have any preference in that regard, since he has complained that YouTube kept sending him advertisements for gay dating sites, prompted by his browsing history?