Politics

LONDON (Bywire News) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been accused of breaking the Ministerial Code again - this time by using taxpayer funds in the campaign for the Hartlepool by-election. According to Insider, the Conservative Party’s spending return for the election shows that the Party spent nothing on transport during their successful campaign for candidate Jill Mortimer to win the seat in Hartlepool. However, on April 1st, Boris Johnson used a private jet to fly from London Stansted to Teeside International Airport, then rode in a motorcade from the airport to a B&Q in Middlesbrough, where he announced a raise in the minimum wage. He then went to Hartlepool to support Mortimer’s campaign, touring a local company and visiting an estate to talk to residents, before flying back to Stansted Airport. Yet the cost of Johnson’s travel has not been included in the spending return, or for the further visits made by Johnson and Priti Patel in the run-up to the by-election. Guidance...

LONDON (Bywire News) - Tory MP Sir Desmond Swayne has been widely criticised on social media for implying that Afghans desperate to escape the Taliban are 'cowards'. His comments were made during a debate in the House of Commons about the ongoing situation in Afghanistan, where the brutal Taliban regime have taken over after the withdrawal of US and UK troops. Swayne, who sits as the MP for New Forest West, intervened during a speech by Keir Starmer, asking the Labour leader: “Were the government of this Kingdom to be overthrown by a wicked and brutal regime, I venture that he would want a leading role in the resistance, he wouldn’t be queuing at the airport would he?” Unsurprisingly, Swayne's comments were met with derision from the Labour Leader, who replied: “When I was Director of Public Prosecutions I had some of my prosecutors in Afghanistan at huge risk working on counterterrorism with other brave souls there. So I won’t take that from him or anybody else,” In addition to Starm...

A Labour Council leader has been severely criticised after calling for the formation of an 'anti-migrant militia' to defend Britain's coastline. Brendan Chilton, the Labour Group Leader on Ashford Council in Kent, suggested that ordinary Brits could set up a "Home Guard" to repel asylum seekers arriving on UK shores. Writing on Twitter, Chilton said: "Here's an idea. It's quite clear the Channel migrant crisis is not going away. The Government haven't got a clue. How many are arriving and then disappearing? Perhaps we need to form a sort of 'Home Guard'- voluntary- to support the coast guard, police, border force etc?'   The leader of @ashfordlabour @BrendanChilton has now deleted his anti-refugee tweet so here's a screenshot. pic.twitter.com/Qu30zrQrEf — Bridget Chapman 🧡 #WearAMask #GetVaccinated (@BridgeeCee) August 11, 2021   After being inundated with a torrent of criticism, Chilton swiftly deleted his tweet - but not before numerous Twitter users managed to grab screenshots, l...

A Labour Council leader has been severely criticised after calling for the formation of an 'anti-migrant militia' to defend Britiain's coastline. Brendan Chilton, the Labour Group Leader on Ashford Council in Kent, suggested that ordinary Brits could set up a "Home Guard" to repel asylum seekers arriving on UK shores. Writing on Twitter, Chilton said: "Here's an idea. It's quite clear the Channel migrant crisis is not going away. The Government haven't got a clue. How many are arriving and then disappearing? Perhaps we need to form a sort of 'Home Guard'- voluntary- to support the coast guard, police, border force etc?'   The leader of @ashfordlabour @BrendanChilton has now deleted his anti-refugee tweet so here's a screenshot. pic.twitter.com/Qu30zrQrEf — Bridget Chapman 🧡 #WearAMask #GetVaccinated (@BridgeeCee) August 11, 2021   After being inundated with a torrent of criticism, Chilton swiftly deleted his tweet - but not before numerous Twitter users managed to grab screenshots,...

LONDON (Bywire News) - A secret club exists for super-rich Tory donors to schmooze with senior members of the government including Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, it has been revealed.  The Conservative ‘Advisory Board’ is an exclusive club for super-rich businesspeople who have donated large sums of money to the Tories. In return for their financial contributions, members are invited to regular meetings and calls with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.  According to the Financial Times, one donor said that some members of the secretive organisation use meetings to demand lower taxes and cuts to public spending.  The group is reportedly run by the Conservative co-chair Ben Elliot - whose company, Quintessentially, admitted to making illegal payments to its shareholders earlier this year.  In addition to the so-called 'Advisory Board', the Tories have another exclusive donors-only organisation - called the “Leaders Group” - which allows people who have donated £50,000 to the party e...

LONDON (Bywire News) - An astonishing video created by the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI) explaining exactly why they rescue asylum seekers in distress in the English Channel has gone viral on Twitter - and it shows precisely why Priti Patel and the Conservative Party should be truly ashamed of themselves. Earlier this month, the government published the Nationality and Borders bill - a piece of legislation which aims to make it illegal for asylum seekers to enter the UK without permission. Patel claims that, rather than attempting to cross the Channel themselves, asylum seekers should simply use 'safe and legal routes' in order to claim in asylum in the UK. Despite Patel's advice, there is currently no safe and legal route for unrecognised refugees to claim asylum in the UK - a fact that Clare Mosely of the Care4Calais charity eloquently summed up, stating: "If this Government really wanted to combat people smugglers, it would create a safe way for refugees to claim UK asyl...

LONDON (Bywire News) - Tory MP Tom Hunt flew into a fit of rage during a discussion about immigration with Novara Media's calm and collected Contributing Editor Ash Sarkar live on the BBC's Politics Live show this morning. During the heated debate, Sarkar argued that the Tory government's treatment of asylum seekers and refugees was inhumane, and claimed that treating people in this way merely perpetuated the very problem that it was supposed to solve. [BYWIRE_DONOR_BOX] Sarkar brought up the example of asylum seekers housed in “filthy” and "overcrowded" conditions at Napier Barracks - a situation that Priti Patel's Home Office had recently been found to have acted unlawfully over by the High Court: "Making conditions more miserable for migrants isn't really having an effect on either asylum claims or small boat crossings. "We've seen the conditions in Napier barracks, which are terrible: a huge outbreak of Coronavirus, a fire that was set because people were so miserable, and felt so...

LONDON (Bywire News) - There is a huge double standard when you compare the way the press treated Jeremy Corbyn and his policies versus how they treat the same ideas under the Tory government. The majority of the mainstream media do not like Corbyn. In fact, analysis in 2019 showed that the press shared stories from military and intelligence sources portraying Corbyn as a ‘threat to national security’ on average once every six weeks when he was elected leader of the Labour Party. They took a dislike to him immediately, and scoffed at his ideas to improve lives. A 4-day week would ruin the economy. It was laughable, said the press. There was no way it could have been done, not under Corbyn anyway. But now, under Tory rule, it’s a great plan! A completely new and fresh idea, right? The Express published an article in April explaining how a four day week after COVID could benefit people’s mental health and be the new normal. They do not berate the idea in the article, instead reporting...

LONDON (Bywire News) - Labour's Deputy Leader Angela Rayner has been criticised on social media after posting, and then swiftly deleting, a tweet claiming that the Home Secretary Priti Patel had not secured the UK's borders well enough. During last night's epic Euro 2020 match between Switzerland and France, and just after Spain had beaten Croatia 5-3 after extra time, Rayner attempted to make a joke about shoddy defending. Writing on Twitter, the Labour Deputy Leader quipped that the defenders "must have been taking notes" from Home Secretary Priti Patel "on securing our borders". However, just two minutes after posting the tweet, Rayner deleted it - but not before several screenshots were taken and the official Deleted by MPs Twitter account had registered it. Rayner's full tweet read: "Defenders tonight must have been taking notes from @GavinWilliamson on educating our kids and @pritipatel on securing our borders. Fantastic entertainment though #FRASUI"   [IMAGE_GALLERY_1]   Since...

LONDON (Bywire News) - A Labour MP has blasted Sajid Javid over his £1,500 per hour advisory job for the major private healthcare investor J. P. Morgan - leading to a "pathetic" response from the new Health Secretary. In September 2020, following his resignation as Chancellor, Sajid Javid took up a highly lucrative second job advising the financial giant, J. P. Morgan. According to the Register of Financial Interests, Javid - who previously worked for numerous financial institutions just prior to the financial crash and before entering politics - pocketed a hefty £150,000 annual salary for working for less than 2 hours a week.   [IMAGE_GALLERY_1]   Speaking in the House of Commons yesterday, the former Shadow Justice Secretary, Richard Burgon, raised the issue with Javid - stating: "The new Health Secretary hasn’t been on the frontbench for a year, but in that time he has been very busy. "Very busy indeed, lining his own pockets, getting £1,500 per hour for his second job, £1,500 for...

LONDON (Bywire News) - Young people and private renters have vented their fury at the Labour Party after it came out in opposition to extra housebuilding and in support of wealthy homeowners. Writing on Twitter, the official Labour Party account slammed the Tories' so-called Developers' Charter - proposals which would relax planning rules and allow more houses to be built - stating: "The Conservatives’ developers’ charter would sell off and sell out our communities. Local people, not Tory Party donors, should decide what’s best for where they live."   The Conservatives’ developers’ charter would sell off and sell out our communities. Local people, not Tory Party donors, should decide what’s best for where they live. pic.twitter.com/pAg0xh46nb — The Labour Party (@UKLabour) June 21, 2021   The Developers' Charter is a white paper - officially titled Planning For The Future - commissioned in August 2020, which recommended a huge overhaul of housebuilding planning rules. However, whilst...

The phone hacking inquiry should have been the death knell for Murdoch’s grip on power. Instead he has more influence than ever. How did that happen?

LONDON (Bywire News) - The report into private investigator Daniel Morgan's murder was finally released today after years of delays from the Home Office. It is about as damning as it possibly could be, and there are a lot of people and organisations who have questions to answer. Not least of them are politicians and the Metropolitan Police for standing in the way of inquiries, failing to cooperate and the Home Office who seeked to delay its release. The panel found that institutional corruption played a huge part in the failures of the multiple investigations in to the murder, and added that corruption is still prevalent within the police, saying: "Institutional corruption isn't used in a historic sense. It is used in a current sense." There are two big issues we should look into above all else that hindered the case: police incompetence and corruption and the complicity of the Murdoch-led media. Police incompetence Problems were identified from the outset of the original murder inve...

Financial journalist Martin Lewis has brilliantly debunked the theory that footballers taking the knee before a game are somehow supporting a "Marxist" movement.

Corruption, incompetence and collusion: what can we expect from tomorrow’s report into the murder of Daniel Morgan?

LONDON (Bywire News) - A 'Big Pharma CEO' has been caught on camera saying that he doesn’t want to sell vaccines to poorer countries because there’s no profit in it. Despite the big pharmaceutical companies being predicted to make a staggering $30bn in revenue this year - and handing out a monstrous $26bn in dividends to shareholders - they are strangleholding poorer countries who cannot afford their prices, and they refuse to give up their patents to allow developing nations to produce their own generic vaccines. In addition, the $26bn paid out from multinational pharma companies to their shareholders alone would be enough to vaccinate 1.3bn people - or the entire population of Africa. That is why the People’s Vaccine is urging governments and pharmaceutical companies to sell vaccines at affordable prices. But, as the 'Big Pharma CEO' puts it: “That’s an absolutely terrible idea”. In a Twitter rant after his shocking comments were exposed, the CEO also exposed the astonishing greed o...

LONDON (Bywire News) - The millionaire ex-banker Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak is lobbying G7 partners to exclude Financial Services firms located in the City of London from Joe Biden's proposals for a Global Minimum Corporation Tax. According to source close to negotiations, Sunak believes that the tax would unfairly hit banking bosses in the capital because they supposedly already "pay a fair share of tax". When the agreement was announced on Saturday, Sunak lauded the deal - which would effectively outlaw tax havens across the globe - as "historic", and claimed that the "seismic" changes would create "a fairer tax system fit for the 21st century" that would significantly benefit UK taxpayers. As reported by Bywire at the time, research conducted into the proposals found that a "15% Minimum Global Corporation Tax could raise an extra £13.5bn a year for the UK’s public purse, rising to over £22bn a year if the rate was raised to 25%." However, it is believed that Sunak - who made his m...

LONDON (Bywire News) - The government's controversial plans to spend £200m on a new Royal Yacht are set to be scuppered as it would contravene rules contained in a World Trade Organisation (WTO) trade deal that Boris Johnson himself negotiated. Last month, the UK government announced plans to build a new national flagship - to replace HMS Britannia which was decommissioned in 1997 - in order to promote British trade and industry across the globe. At the time, Johnson said that the vessel would reflect "the UK’s burgeoning status as a great, independent maritime trading nation”, and Number 10 proudly boasted that the ship would be built by British shipbuilders. However, the proposals were also widely criticised, with many claiming that £200m was a huge waste of money, especially when the economy is facing major struggles due to the pandemic, and that there were other more important areas to focus cash on - with Labour's Bridget Phillipson saying: "Right now our country faces huge chall...

LONDON (Bywire News) - The Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been ridiculed after referring to critics of the government's Foreign Aid cuts - including numerous Tory MPs such as the former PM Theresa May - as 'lefty propagandists'. Responding to a question from the SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford, Johnson said that people should not listen to the 'lefty propaganda' from critics of his proposed cuts to the international development budget. Blackford initially asked: "Later this week, the Prime Minister will walk into the G7 summit as the only leader cutting development aid to the world's poorest. [...]This is a government on the run from their own moral and legal responsibilities, and on the run from their own backbenchers. "But the Prime Minister cannot hide from this issue any long, and he cannot run from democracy in this house. Will he stand up today and commit to a straight vote in this House on his inhumane cuts, as demanded by the Speaker? "It is a very simple question - y...

LONDON (Bywire News) - The High Court has ruled that the Government acted unlawfully when they awarded a contract worth £560,000 to friends of Boris Johnson's former chief advisor, Dominic Cummings. The market research firm, Public First, is run by Rachel Wolf and her husband James Frayne. Frayne has also previously worked as an advisor to Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings and Michael Gove and helped to write the Tory manifesto for the 2019 General Election. Whilst ministers have denied any favouritism and Cummings has disputed the claim, the judge said that there was "a real danger" of bias as no other firms were considered for the contract. Barrister Jolyon Maugham from The Good Law Project, who brought the case to court, said after the ruling: “Government has claimed there was no favouritism in the awarding of contracts. But the High Court has held an informed observer would conclude otherwise." Maugham added: “This is not government for the public good – it is government for the goo...