- “Michael Gove stands down as MP amid growing Tory exodus” – Michael Gove’s resignation piles more pressure on Rishi Sunak as a new poll puts the Conservatives 22 points behind, reports the Times.
- “John Redwood to step down as record number of Tory MPs set to quit” – Wokingham MP becomes the 73rd Tory to stand down as he says “I have other things I wish to do”, says the Telegraph.
- “Andrea Leadsom is latest to join Tory exodus” – In a letter to the Prime Minister, Andrea Leadsom says she has come to the decision after “careful reflection” but did not go into detail about her reasons for quitting, according to the Mail.
- “The ideological tensions within the Conservatives are now deeper” – The General Election on July 4th won’t only be a clash between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, says Brendan O’Neill in the Mail. Beneath this public scramble for power, another battle is brewing.
- “Downbeat Keir Starmer complains ‘we don’t live in an ideal world’” – In a media round on day two of the General Election campaign, the opposition leader was challenged on his former backing for issues, including scrapping university tuition fees. He did not do well, reports the Mail.
- “Our obsession with ‘diversity’ has made Britain more divided than ever” – Lumping together the ‘working’ and ‘criminal’ class is neo-Victorian snobbery, says Rabik Ehsan in the Telegraph. It’s a classic example of how damaging and divisive DEI is.
- “Medical experts are unwilling to give evidence in gender cases” – Trolling and the toxic debate surrounding giving children puberty blockers or hormonal treatment is putting specialists off appearing in court, according to the Times.
- “Labour is still the party of Greta Thunberg, trans extremists, and pro-Hamas hate mobs” – Keir Starmer won’t tell us his actual plans, so we must rely on what we know about the Left’s instincts, says Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph.
- “Hay Festival bows to pressure and cuts ties with sponsors over Israel links” – Following a celebrity boycott of the Hay Festival, the organisers have cancelled their sponsorship deal with investment firm Baillie Gifford, reports the Telegraph.
- “Private school parents pull children out as Starmer vows to launch tax raid ‘straight away’” – Families are cancelling their children’s places or rushing to pay fees ahead of the election, says the Telegraph.
- “The Tories can still be the party of change” – David Frost with an optimistic take on the General Election result in the Telegraph.
- “Starmer would be the most dangerous PM since the 1970s” – Boris Johnson says in the Mail he cannot believe that the British people would be so utterly mad as to hand Keir Starmer a majority.
- “Stop making plane turbulence about climate change” – Rupa Subramanya in the Free Press tries to bottom out the claim that the turbulence experienced by passengers on the Singapore Airlines flight earlier this week was caused by climate change.
- “The new Rocky movie looks a bit shit” – James Melville is underwhelmed by Keir Starmer’s boxing demo.
The new Rocky movie looks a bit shit.pic.twitter.com/Bqx4tn33IC
— James Melville(@JamesMelville) May 24, 2024
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https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-wants-ukraine-ceasefire-current-frontlines-sources-say-2024-05-24/
What’s really going on?
Putin wants to end the war in Ukraine by reaching a ceasefire that recognizes the current battlefield lines.
Putin is frustrated with Ukraine’s decision not to engage in talks.
Putin has regularly claimed that he wants to bring the war to an end since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, even as Russia has continued launching near-daily attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.
Putin believes he could successfully sell Moscow’s current gains in the war as a victory to the Russian public.
I wonder if that is connected to this?:
Russian troops are “completely bogged down” in street battles for the town of Vovchansk in Kharkiv Oblast, having suffered “very heavy losses,”
Russia launched a new offensive on May 10 in northern Kharkiv Oblast. Moscow’s forces had managed to advance as far as 10 kilometers (6 miles) into the region but had been halted by the first line of defence.
Russian troops are now deploying their reserves from different sectors, but fail to support active assault operations in the region.
Russia also switched to active defense near the village of Lyptsi
Or alternatively the attack by “Ukraine” on Russia’s nuclear missile early warning system is a consequence of USA using Ukraine to fight its wars and prevent Russia responding legally against America. A ceasefire blunts Western proxy agression on Russian territory by removing their excuse.
Not everyone reads the situation in leaderless Ukraine as positive.
“Vladimir Putin’s forces are grinding forward, using their numerical advantages and exploiting the slowness of the west to supply sufficient air defense and ammunition. They have opened a new front north of Kharkiv, which is closer to the Russian frontier than London is to Oxford. It’s feared that Russian forces will now get within artillery range of the besieged city, which is already being pounded by Russian missiles, drones and glide bombs
…
Russia’s main purpose seems to be to stretch the roughly 1,000km-long frontline so that, as Ukraine diverts troops to defend Kharkiv, Putin’s army can push forward in the east, taking more of the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces that he already claims are irrevocably part of the Russian Federation. One western military expert says this is a “moment of jeopardy” for Ukraine.
…
Interestingly, one criticism I heard repeatedly is that he [Zelensky] continues to feed unrealistic hopes of total victory – that is, the reconquest of all Ukraine’s sovereign territory in its 1991 frontiers, including Crimea. Even senior officials privately give a more cautious definition of victory. ‘Publicly, I support what the president says,’ one told me. ‘Unpublicly, I think we should survive as an independent western state that has the possibility of development.'”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/24/ukraine-western-support-boxing-champion-russia
also reprinted in the Kyiv Post
https://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/33252
A soldier who serves in a motorized rifle battalion of the 44th Army Corps of the Russian Armed Forces, said that one division in his unit outright refused to participate in the offensive against Kharkiv Oblast.
An Atesh (partisan) member said that soldiers of that unit were wary of the fortifications had been build along the Russian-Ukrainian border. He also said the soldiers had witnessed Russian sabotage and reconnaissance operations in the region that were unsuccessful.
“In view of this, when … the order was given, part of the unit refused to carry out the criminal will of the command,”
Meanwhile British police have charged 64-year-old Howard Michael Phillips and said the charge related to Russia. Phillips was arrested in central London and charged with violating a section of the NSA that relates to assisting a foreign intelligence service.
This arrest comes after a string of measures taken against Russia to protect the UK, follow a pattern of malign activity carried out both here and abroad in the past year, which is believed to be linked to Russia.
That includes 5 Bulgarian nationals charged with conspiring to commit espionage activities in the UK on behalf of Russia. A sixth individual was later charged and legal proceedings for all are ongoing.
Last month, a further 5 individuals were the first to be charged in connection with an investigation into alleged offences under the National Security Act. The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed at the time it related to alleged ‘hostile activity in the UK in order to benefit a foreign state – namely Russia”.
Mind how you go.
There seems to be a lot of Putin mind-reading going on. Still that is probably less unpleasant than Biden mind-reading. Both are futile and are simply a tol-ol for the mindreader to assert their beliefs.
“Mind how you go”, the Met arrested an unemployed bloke for possibly assisting Russian intelligence services.
Same Russian intelligence services that we are told successfully poison people in mainland UK and rig elections in the US – both without leaving irrefutable evidence. So they need to use Unemployed Bloke for intel?
Sorry, didn’t understand a single word of that. Stop trying to be clever and make your accusations in plain English.
You make a good point but I was making light of the Monro accounts comment. You might find yourself getting arrested for espionage for questioning the narrative.
Vladimir, the underpants poisoner…….
After the Metropolitan police published photos of Boshirov and Petrov, Bellingcat took up the hunt. It sought to unmask their real identities.
The passport photo showed a younger version of the assassin wanted by the British authorities. Chepiga was Boshirov, and Boshirov was Chepiga. Chepiga was married with a child…..The first Skripal poisoner
At least seven residents identified (Petrov) Mishkin from the photo produced by the British police…..(The second Skripal poisoner) Mishkin
Chepiga and Mishkin’s joint interview on RT was a disaster. It was an unintentionally comic performance that made them and the GRU a laughing stock, not only among English-speaking countries, but across Russia, too. They were professional spies, and so lacked media experience.
More than 20 western countries expelled Russian diplomats in solidarity. About 150 embassy-based spies, mostly GRU officers, were forced to pack their bags. This was a serious blow to Russia’s overseas espionage network……..The Trump administration removed 60 Russian officials, including a dozen based at the UN in New York. It shut the consulate in Seattle, ending the Russian Federation’s diplomatic representation on the US west coast.
And then…..
One of the men, named by Mr Navalny as an employee of Russia’s FSB security service, spoke to him for 49 minutes: he said he was part of the clean-up team, and pointed to Mr Navalny’s underwear as a place where the substance that poisoned the politician may have been planted. The man on the other end of the call indicated that he was involved in the “processing” of Navalny’s clothes so “there wouldn’t be any traces”
‘”Murder is the only way he knows how to fight…….He’ll go down in history as nothing but a poisoner. We all remember Alexander the Liberator [Alexander II] and Yaroslav the Wise [Yaroslav I]. Well, now we’ll have Vladimir the Underpants Poisoner.”
Navalny 01 Feb 2021
Celebrity Doctors Paid By Pharma – latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, including your election candidates, your local vicar, online media and friends online. We have over 200 leaflet ideas on the link on the leaflet.
With Starmer now the question isn’t just if he would ever be prepared to push the nuclear launch button, but if he is physically capable of doing so.
Well based purely on his behaviour thus far around the trans/gender identity issues I’m aghast that such a man ( it’s ”not right” to say only women have a cervix! ) has managed to stay married. Talk about a ‘deal-breaker’…;
”Rishi Sunak’s election campaign launch might have been humiliating, but Sir Keir Starmer’s revealed something far more worrying about the imminent prospect of a Labour government.
The event was held in Kent and featured a number of Labour bigwigs. But there was a notable exclusion: Rosie Duffield—the only elected Labour MP in the county. The reason for this, though Labour won’t admit it, is both simple and sinister.
The party’s leadership does not want to be associated with Duffield’s mainstream view that only women have a cervix and that transgender women are not women (i.e. they are men). In contemporary jargon, this makes her ‘gender critical,’ or even subject to the slur ‘Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist,’ or ‘TERF.’
Duffield has long been targeted by her own party because of her views on the transgender issue, including an official investigation which eventually saw her exonerated. Reports say that Starmer even refused to meet her “for years,” until he finally accepted last month—in the face of a significant critical review of “transgender medicine”—that Duffield was right to say that only a woman has a cervix.
Starmer’s failure to invite this local (and lone) MP to his Kent campaign launch reveals this climbdown—and Labour’s wider alleged post-Cass report shift on trans issues—to have been skin-deep.
Indeed, Duffield is understood to have only found out about the event after people asked on Twitter why she wasn’t there. Ann Sinnott, who is director of the Authentic Equity Alliance, said this is because “she stands up for women and girls, single-sex toilets and female-only rape crisis centres.”
“Starmer,” she added, “is not to be trusted.”
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/keir-starmers-labour-shuns-its-own-gender-critical-mp/
May all your dreams come true.
Boris Johnson says in the Mail he cannot believe that the British people would be so utterly mad as to hand Keir Starmer a majority.
Well, if that happens Boris DeWaffle Johnson it’s entirely your fault.
You could have had a proper Brexit (No Deal), no lockdown, no jabbing, very limited immigration, no Net Zero, energy independence, much lower taxes and spending, strong defence, but you didn’t.
Starmer will get a majority thanks to those who still think there are party politics operating in the UK. Still lots of people who haven’t realised the dividing line doesn’t run vertically between left and right, but horizontally between the Elite and the Proles. The Elites are all busy filling their pockets with billionaires money, which they get from fleecing the proles. The billionaires imagine that having accumulated more money that they could ever need, they can play the Earth and its inhabitants like a computer game. As George Carlin used to say, ‘Its a big club, and you aint in it’.
Agree entirely
Having fewer competitors makes the ‘choice’ less of a problem.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13456697/Boris-Johnson-Keir-Starmer-dangerous-left-wing-1970s.html
We handed you a thumping majority Jonhson and look where that took us. The sheer cheek to post such an article. Could you just jogg off?
John Ellwood at TCW casting a critical eye over the candidates standing for Dudley in the upcoming General.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/vote-for-me-or-die-a-horrible-death/
Completely agree with this comment. How many young people would like to have children ( or more kids than they already have ) but are prevented from doing so because they can’t afford it? Or they take one look at the way society is evolving and think, ”no chance”? Not everybody wishes to plough on with starting a family safe in the knowledge that the welfare system will see them right. There are many reasons why people are not having kids and this is just one of them.
( 2mins );
“We have a falling birth rate … In places like Scotland, we have a need for much greater migration”
”Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle confirms a Labour government’s intent to use mass immigration to substitute for native sub-replacement birth rates.
Immigration is the cause of 89% of housing falling short of demand.
Where will Brits have and raise those children if in constant competition with the churn of millions of entrants from all over the world?
If your culture is in flux and local area rendered unrecognisable by demographic change, will you feel secure enough to establish a family?
When JuliaHB1
pressed on this, he acted as if she wanted mandatory insemination camps.
Upwards of 90% of women reported wanting two or more children.
80% of childless people (projected 800 million by 2050 ) wanted children but suffered social and economic impediments to having them.
Humans are not fungible, swappable, interchange market widgets.
We belong to families, cultures, congregations, nations.
Mass immigration is an ideological sticking plaster over a haemorrhaging wound of economic mismanagement and civilisational malaise.
More immigration will rob the dream of parenthood from many.
It is a moral crime to inflict such tragedy on so many.”
https://x.com/Con_Tomlinson/status/1793609127773487531
Election announcement created a good day to bury bad news, top civil servant Simon Case appeared at the COVID inquiry on Thursday. Perhaps DS could do an article on it?
https://covid19.public-inquiry.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/23214722/C-19-Inquiry-23-May-2024-Module-2-Day-36.pdf