Newslinks for Sunday February 9th 2025 | Conservative Home

Health Minister sacked after saying he hoped pensioner would die

“A Labour Minister has been sacked after The Mail on Sunday exposed his racist and sexist messages, including one vile post saying he hoped a pensioner who didn’t vote Labour would die before the next election. Andrew Gwynne also made anti-Semitic slights and ‘jokes’ about a constituent being ‘mown down’ by a truck. Keir Starmer stripped Mr Gwynne of his job as Health Minister and suspended his membership of the Labour Party when he was told about the content of the WhatsApp messages yesterday. Meanwhile, the MP himself apologised for his ‘badly misjudged comments’. ” – Mail on Sunday

• Now the mask slips to expose sneering bigots at the heart of Labour – Leader, Mail on Sunday

Starmer tried to stop BBC revealing  Sue Gray’s earnings

“Sir Keir Starmer asked the cabinet secretary to urge the BBC not to run a story revealing that his top adviser Sue Gray earned more than him. Simon Case spoke to the corporation’s director-general and political editor last year when Downing Street was scrambling to stop the chief of staff’s salary becoming public along with allegations about how she had been awarded it. The prime minister enlisted the support of the nation’s top official soon after the BBC contacted Downing Street saying it was preparing to report that Gray had asked for and received a pay rise taking her salary to £170,000 — £3,000 more than Starmer’s.” – Sunday Times

• The new No 10 svengali picked the wrong PM – Dominic Lawson, Sunday Times

Badenoch warns of £200 billion cost of Labour’s immigration failures

“Kemi Badenoch has warned that taxpayers could face an “astronomic” bill of more than £200 billion because of Labour’s failure to tackle mass migration. The Tory leader said that Labour’s “lax approach” would see Britain carry on subsidising low-paid foreign workers and their dependents. Mrs Badenoch was responding to a think tank report which found households face a long-term bill of £8,200 each to fund extra services for 800,000 recent arrivals. The Centre for Policy Studies has calculated that more than 800,000 migrants who came to Britain between 2021 and 2024 could permanently settle in the UK. It said the cumulative bill for the extra services and benefits they required, compared with the taxes they would pay, would come to £243 billion over their lifetimes.” – Sunday Telegraph

• Britain can’t afford low-paid migrants – Leader, Sunday Telegraph
• One in four people in Britain set to be a migrant by 2035, claims study – The Sun on Sunday
• Thousands of Syrians in limbo as UK Home Office freezes asylum claims – The Observer

>Today: ToryDiary: Badenoch’s new immigration policy is a step in the right direction – but what happened to the grand review?

Colvile: It’s mad to give migrants leave to remain when we’ve no idea if they contribute

“In short, there are hundreds of thousands of new migrants — though there is ferocious argument over the precise proportion — who will cost the country more than they contribute. Our paper uses Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) statistics to compute the likely cost, and comes out with a central estimate, across the entire 2021-24 cohort, of £234 billion. This will, of course, be spread over very many years. And it is the subject of huge uncertainty. It may be that migrants’ wages increase after arrival, as Prof Portes argues. But it is just as likely that our estimate is too low: the survey data in question tends to undercount low-paid migrants, and our fiscal profiles cut off at the age of 82, excluding the cost to the NHS of extreme old age.” – Robert Colvile, Sunday Times

Labour to “fix” sickness benefits system

“Britain’s broken welfare system is fuelling the “greatest unemployment challenge of a generation”, ministers have concluded as they draw up a root-and-branch overhaul designed to counter the spiralling numbers deemed too unwell to work. Rules that force benefit claimants into an “all or nothing” choice between working and being deemed too sick to work are set to be redrawn, the Observer understands. It follows new evidence that thousands of people who want to work are worried about taking steps to return to the workplace out of fear that their benefits will be withdrawn…Under the current system, those deemed too sick to work receive a higher payment than those deemed either able to work or able to do some work. Those unable to work at all receive an extra £416 a month.” – The Observer

Farage “prepared to work with Boris Johnson”

“Nigel Farage is prepared to work with Boris Johnson to defeat Labour ‘in the national interest’, sources close to the Reform UK leader have told The Mail on Sunday. Based on current polling, a Reform/Tory ‘mega party’ would trounce Sir Keir Starmer – who is shedding votes as his stumbling Government experiences an unprecedented post-election collapse in support. Kemi Badenoch’s Tories have publicly ruled out any negotiations with Reform, but this newspaper can reveal that allies of Mr Farage and the former Tory leadership contender Robert Jenrick met last week at the In and Out private members’ club in Mayfair for informal discussions about ‘uniting the right’ – although the sources insist that the talks were not sanctioned by either Mr Farage or Mr Jenrick.” – Mail on Sunday

• Tories call for pact with Reform UK – Sunday Express
• Poll has Labour one point ahead of Reform UK – The Observer
• Reform will win ‘350 to 400’ seats at next General Election in landslide victory over Labour, party chairman insists – The Sun on Sunday
• The Farage effect: why Keir Starmer is styling Labour as the ‘disruptors’ – Toby Helm, The Observer
• PM rails at ‘complacent liberals’ as Farage pulls the strings – Sunday Times
• Cummings on Johnson’s fall: Obviously I orchestrated it – Sunday Times

BBC must reform or die, warn former Tory Ministers

“The BBC must reform the way it is funded or risk being squeezed out of existence by streaming rivals, two senior former ministers have warned. Sir John Hayes, a former security minister, and Sir John Whittingdale, a former culture secretary, said the licence fee was no longer fit for purpose in face of competition from streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+. They backed a report, published this weekend, which recommended that the BBC should instead switch to become a subscription service and be allowed to take adverts to counter a growing public backlash against the licence fee. The report, by Defund the BBC, an organisation set up to campaign for decriminalisation of non-payment of the licence fee, said mutualisation, an option put forward by Lisa Nandy, Labour’s Culture Secretary, would not go far enough.” – Sunday Telegraph

• Scrapping the licence fee will force the BBC to excel – John Hayes, Sunday Telegraph

Police investigate Labour’s battlebus expenses

“The Labour battlebus used by Angela Rayner during last year’s General Election is at the centre of a police investigation into alleged expenses irregularities, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. Lancashire Police are looking into a ‘substantial and detailed complaint’ about election expenses that were submitted by Labour MP Lizzi Collinge, who won the seat of Morecambe and Lunesdale. She declared that she had spent £18,446.96 – under the allowed limit of just over £20,000. But officers are examining claims that the cost of a visit to the constituency by Ms Rayner on the battlebus should have been included in the total.” – Mail on Sunday

US foreign aid funded legal advice for trans asylum seekers in Britain

“US foreign aid funded legal advice for transgender asylum seekers in Britain, as well as a raft of diversity initiatives in the UK, The Telegraph can reveal. Joe Biden’s administration donated at least $120,000 to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and LGBT initiatives across the UK, which included Pride-themed concerts and a book festival interview series on “gender identity and inequality”. Donald Trump this week began disbanding the US international development agency USAid, claiming US taxpayers were funding “radical” Left-wing initiatives around the world.” – Sunday Telegraph

• It could not be clearer that Britain needs a political force to wrench it from its complacency – Leader, Sunday Telegraph
• The NHS has got to stop doing daft nonsense like erasing the word ‘woman’ from documents and get back to basics – Wes Streeting, The Sun on Sunday
• The NHS must be inoculated against calamitous woke virus if it is to regain its own health – Leader, The Sun on Sunday

Other political news

• Protesters descend on site of China’s planned London ‘super embassy’ – Sunday Times
• Labour mayor for the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough will not stand for re-election – BBC
• Starmer runs up £700,000 bill for flights in his first three months… more than Sunak, Johnson and Truss used in a similar period combined – Mail on Sunday
• Rayner defends handling of Grenfell Tower meeting – BBC
• Tories demand Starmer must ‘come clean’ over how much his voice coach cost – Mail on Sunday
• Freed Thai hostages arrive home in Bangkok – BBC
• Starvation of hostages is ‘crime against humanity’, say furious Israelis – Sunday Telegraph
• Taxpayers forked out huge sum for civil servants to stay in luxury Spanish hotel for IT conference – The Sun on Sunday
• Hundreds of civil servants given £100k ‘golden goodbyes’ with taxpayers’ money – Sunday Express
• Trump cuts aid to South Africa over ‘racial discrimination’ against Afrikaners – The Observer
• Who is helping Elon Musk’s US government cost-cutting – The Observer
• Trump won’t deport the Duke of Sussex – Sunday Telegraph
• Starmer urged to resist pressure to permit Rosebank North Sea oilfield – The Observer
• Airlines warn No 10 over cost of Heathrow’s third runway – Sunday Times
• Ministry to digitalise property data to speed up homebuying process – The Observer
• Tulip Siddiq’s holiday home under investigation – Sunday Times
• Embarrassing moment hot mic catches Justin Trudeau revealing fears over Trump’s plan to ‘annex Canada’ – The Sun on Sunday

Ashcroft: Labour’s ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’ threatens school standards

“By inviting private enterprise to found and run academies, and giving them the freedom to pay teachers more, tailor their curriculum to their pupils’ needs and even set their own term time, successive governments of both main parties have facilitated a vast improvement in education standards. Yet in a spiteful act of class warfare, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is unravelling that hard-won achievement. The freedoms enjoyed by academies are anathema to her, for she wants a homogenised schools system where the rules are all laid down in Whitehall…This open-minded and flexible approach to teaching has helped Ashcroft Technology Academy (ATA) become the 15th top performing school in the country.” – Lord Ashcroft, Mail on Sunday

• ‘A Marxist who hates academies’ – is that why Phillipson abhors excellence? – Camilla Tominey, Sunday Telegraph
• Successful special educational needs complaints in England quadruple in four years – The Observer
• Fears ministers will axe pledge to serve British grown food in schools in fresh blow to farmers – The Sun on Sunday
• Cash-strapped schools plan to lay off teachers in blow to Labour’s promise – The Observer

Hannan: Can anything be done to stop the Chagos surrender?

The Chagos fiasco may yet do for Keir Starmer. As well as being calamitous in itself, it confirms the negatives that voters have about him: that he is weak, unpatriotic, spendthrift, lawyerly, a poor negotiator, a champion of every country but his own…Can anything be done, even at this late hour, to stop the surrender? Well, the Leader of the Opposition could make clear that a future Conservative government would abrogate any treaty, halt payments and reassert control over the archipelago. Indeed, if you’re reading, Kemi, you might also declare that, if Mauritius revives its claim once your government has cancelled the deal, you will treat its demand as an unfriendly act and set Britain’s visa policies accordingly.” – Daniel Hannan, Sunday Telegraph

•  Attorney General who represented ‘Al-Qaeda terrorist’ raked in huge sum in legal aid fees in just four years – The Sun on Sunday

Fuller: The United States shows us the way

“Starmer and Reeves should see the many warning lights flashing in front of them, and take the difficult decisions needed to reduce the ever-bloating size of the state, get serious on welfare reform rather than endlessly kicking it into the long grass, and tackle public sector productivity – rather burdening this country with more of her economic ineptitude. And they need to look no further than the United States to know what is needed more than anything is a government that sees the value of business, pursues a dynamic economic agenda, strips backs the barriers to growth and regulatory red tape, and puts the economic wellbeing of its citizens at heart. If Labour were serious about being anything more than another socialist government, run out of other people’s money, they would embrace this – rather than continuing down this path of Keir Starmer-managed decline.” – Richard Fuller, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Sunday Express

News in brief

• Trump’s ICC sanctions will test an outdated institution – Stephen Daisley, The Spectator
• The benefits of free trade – Jacob Rees-Mogg, Substack
• Britain’s tech unicorns are galloping overseas – Baroness Stowell, CapX
• Farage is exploiting UK’s delayed local elections – James Sean Dickson, Unherd
• Lucy Letby’s supporters have not produced any compelling evidence for a miscarriage of justice – Christopher Snowdon, Spiked
• How to reverse the death spiral of the United Kingdom – James Alexander, Daily Sceptic