Sir Keir Starmer not supportive of Bristol statue being pulled down by protesters June 8, 2020 Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said it was “completely wrong” for protesters to bring down a Bristol statue of a slave trader yesterday, but that the ornament should have been brought down lawfully instead. Starmer said the statue of Edward Colston had “no place in 21st century Britain”, but that the statue “should have [...]
DEBATE: Should we be worried about the privacy issues around the contact tracing app? June 8, 2020 Should we be worried about the security and privacy issues around the government’s contact tracing app? Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, says YES. The government’s contact tracing strategy raises many questions and offers few answers. Why does the UK government, unlike other democracies, want a state-controlled contact tracing app? Why do they want [...]
Can the Boris government really avoid Austerity the sequel? June 8, 2020 There is still a widespread view that austerity at the start of the last decade was somehow a political choice — that David Cameron and George Osborne (remember them) thrust the term into the political discourse simply as an ideological excuse to shrink the size of the state. But far from being a political smokescreen, [...]
Sajid Javid asks Boris Johnson to do more to ‘fight racial injustice’ June 7, 2020 Former chancellor Sajid Javid has called for Boris Johnson to take a larger role in tackling racial inequality in Britain. Javid said “only the Prime Minister is capable of driving real change” and that he should “bring the same energy and determination to fighting racial injustice and delivering equal opportunity” as he has to the [...]
Boris Johnson wants to change ‘defective’ Brexit withdrawal agreement June 7, 2020 The UK is reportedly looking to change the terms of its Brexit withdrawal agreement to fix “unfair defects”. Much of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal was borrowed from Theresa May’s, which was rejected by UK parliament three times. The key change he made was in regards to the Northern Ireland backstop. The Sunday Express reports that [...]
Conservatives and Labour neck-and-neck in new UK opinion polling June 7, 2020 The Conservatives’ lead over Labour in UK opinion polling has been dramatically slashed, after three different surveys put the government ahead by three points or less. Opinium and Deltapoll have the Tories ahead by three per cent and a Survation poll gives the party a two per cent lead in a dramatic turnaround from just [...]
Labour not supportive of changing Sunday trading laws June 7, 2020 Labour has said it does not support the government’s move to scrap trading laws in England, which will allow super markets to open for more than six hours on Sundays. Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said she wasn’t convinced the changes would help stimulate the economy and that they would also deprive workers of seeing [...]
Boris Johnson moves to ease lockdown faster in face of mass job losses June 7, 2020 Boris Johnson is set to accelerate the speed of easing the coronavirus lockdown, after warnings of impending mass unemployment. Ministers have drawn up plans to bring Britain back to something resembling normal life by July, in order to ensure industries benefit from summer trading. The new plans will see the government allow planning restrictions to [...]
Matt Hancock says government made no mistakes on coronavirus lockdown timing June 7, 2020 Health secretary Matt Hancock has defended the decision to not start the coronavirus lockdown earlier, after a government scientific adviser said the delay cost lives. Hancock said today that the government “took the right decisions at the right time” and that no people lost their lives by not locking down earlier. The UK went into [...]
Putting out the fire in America June 6, 2020 Following almost two weeks of nationwide riots in the US in response to the sickening murder of George Floyd by a brutal Minneapolis police officer, this week I could in good conscience write of nothing else. Now is the time for the bravery to alienate both “sides”. Now is the time for truth-telling if the [...]