Breaking: European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg grants rule 39 request to stop the flight to Rwanda from leaving. Basis: real risk of inhuman and degrading treatment (Art. 3 ECHR). Please share - government must comply.
Johnson 1pm : I'm sorry. I've been humbled.
And....I've learnt lessons.
Johnson 2pm: I've changed the rules so I never need to be sorry or humbled again.
People need to stop saying that refugees will be sent to Rwanda for ‘processing’. The policy is to send them there forever - there is no return. This is people trafficking by the Government. They are bribing Rwanda with development funds.
The PM was able to hold a party at Chequers for one reason; ie because he is still PM. So the guest list should be published. Similarly the costs, including the value of in-kind benefits, ie premises, staff, energy-costs and who paid for all of them.
Every single MP worth their salt should have been saying this. Every single one - no exceptions.
@DavidLammy
deserves so much respect for doing so when others parroted the 'respect for democracy' nonsense.
2mins of Hashi Mohamed absolutely smashing the Conservatives Rwanda policy to bits.👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
‘Our learned judges said the Home Office hadn’t even assessed that policy before adopting it
It’s unviable, it’s expensive & the only people it’s going to work for is the Rwandans’
#BBCQT
MPs are not allowed to accuse eachother of lying but the PM is allowed to hurl the worst abuse imaginable by calling Jeremy Corbyn, "Vladmir". How is this acceptable. Can members start calling eachother Adolf? What is going on
@LindsayHoyle_MP
Sometimes I feel like we’re all being given ‘the public school experience’. The language, the gestures, the sports references, the general rip-roaring, raring to go enthusiasm. Feels infantilising and tone deaf to me. Am I alone?
There is a complete dehumanisation of Palestinians and I am absolutely sick of it. Palestinians are apparently either human shields or terrorists and therefore justifiable as targets. The hypocrisy is absolutely astounding.
Can I suggest
@metpoliceuk
that you issue a full statement explaining your position. It is plain that waiting for the results of an internal investigation to decide whether to investigate does not cut it as an explanation.
I just want to weep. A moment of hope trashed again. This cannot go on - they are destroying everything that is good about this country and making all that is bad, worse.
#ElectionNow
Sick. Absolutely sick.Even if this comes out of pure ignorance (and she should not be ignorant) it is abhorrent. Revelling in the suffering of others; in the punishment of a ‘category’ of person. Cruelty personified.
‘I would love to be having a front page of The Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda. That’s my dream. That’s my obsession’ Home Secretary Suella Braverman
Reminder: you need to pass a police check-point to get into Downing Street. Every name is logged. The police were there. No time need be spent - no investigation is necessary - it's all already written down.
Is this what you you were sent to Parliament to do? Is this what you want the police to spend time doing? Or would standing up for your constituents and letting police fight crime be best use of public money?
The cleverest thing that
@Keir_Starmer
could do right now is to commit to proportional representation and a full review of our constitutional arrangements. This must never ever be allowed to happen again.
OK so now we have delay in sanctioning oligarchs blamed on oligarchs’ lawyers (nonsense) and the closing of UK visas for Ukrainians. Tell me we are not a captive state. Tell me our government has not been infiltrated.
#NotMyPM
We need a breakdown of the £436,000 allegedly spent by the Met on the Partygate enquiry. There were 12 officers on it; that makes around £36k each. No forensics. What else? How can it have cost that?
So today we're supposed to focus on rights removal. Yesterday it was strikes. The day before Johnson trying to get his girlfriend a top job in Foreign Office. The day before that Rwanda. And before that...I've forgotten. They are exhausting us - wasting our lives, damaging us.
To traffic a trafficked person to punish the traffickers is to rape a rape victim to punish the rapist. The Rwanda round-ups are the sickest policy this country has come up with for decades.
A party that puts up trade barriers with its biggest market and stops its own citizens from being able to work with and sell freely to 450m consumers is anti-growth.
Seeking insights from a friend who attended Eton, I got this: "you learn to have absolutely no respect - none - for authority or the system. You learn to play the game - but without any respect for the rules or the rulers." And that, my friends, explains Partygate (and much else)
I can’t believe they sacrificed all this for a one-day killing and raping spree. I can’t believe they spent so long building a military tunnel network under all this, waiting for the day they could invade, abduct Israelis, then try to hide under this.
We just wasted 6 years attacking our allies and vilifying the greatest peace project in history. Britain as a significant military and economic power (as we kept telling everyone) intentionally damaged the cause of liberal democracy. It is utterly sickening.
Islamophobia is completely out of control, being propagated by Parliamentarians, editors and journalists. It is resonant of the antisemitism of the 1920s and 30s. Terrifying.
Lawyers have endless patience analysing, explaining, engaging with legal nuances. But in the end the big question here is why the taxpayer has just shelled out £129,000 to pay for private legal advice to Boris Johnson. This was not legal advice required by Government.
Any Tory with half an ounce of conscience or responsibility would cross the House today. They are all complicit in the endless destruction of our country
#enoughisenough
Today I met with senior military & political figures in Israel to discuss the war in Gaza & the tragic strike on the aid convoy.
My thoughts & prayers go out to the family & friends of those killed. This was a terrible mistake for which Israel has rightly apologised.
I am not a religious person but when the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops are explicit that a government policy is profoundly immoral, that this is dismissed, should ring alarm bells. These are dangerous and dark dark steps.
For those who STILL don’t get it, you can’t have ‘the rule of law’ without an independent judiciary and the right of access to court. And a country without the rule of law is not a democracy but a dictatorship. Got it now?
Thank you
@Keir_Starmer
for saying what we all wanted to say to
@BorisJohnson
. Every single one of your words needed to be said - they provide some solace and hope.
GB news is owned by a man suspected of being a Russian spy, who is a major shareholder of Gazprom. It has Putin apologist commentators including Farage and Alice Grant. And it loudly backs the privatisation of Ch4 and the ending of BBC licence fee.
@tomhfh
#WhatMatters
It is impossible to see how Braverman can continue as Attorney General following the expression of this view.
She must now be removed, if she will not resign.
My God we should be airlifting people out. Instead we are asking people to fill out visa forms and stay in hotels to await the turning of the bureaucratic machine. It’s beyond screwed up - it’s inhumane, appalling, cruel - incomprehensible.
Allowing British citizens to bring their parents, siblings and children to safety, is not generosity - it should be a right. This is OUR country, not the Government’s.
55 Tufton street people brought us Brexit, covid/vaccine denial and they are now putting their energies into stopping progress on climate change. Was there ever a more malign group of individuals?
How can you be Lord Chancellor and Deputy PM? One of his primary functions is to defend the independence of the Judiciary - including independence from the PM and DPM. He must defend the judiciary against himself.
It is pretty hard to post this - I have not done so before although I kept it. But it needs to be posted because Susan Hall is the
@Conservatives
candidate for Mayor of London and people need to know what she is.
Behind all this was a team of incredible people working 22 hour days, sleeping not at all and not being paid. These are the people who will keep our country safe, true, honest, good. We must fight the arbitrariness & cruelty that has taken over. This is not the Britain we love.
It’s FAR too late to worry about “prejudicing” the criminal investigation.
@metpoliceuk
did that by waiting for the Cabinet Office to gather the evidence so giving plenty of time for it to be destroyed. Sometimes it is hard to face what seems obvious; we prefer it not to be true.
The BBC needs to step up and understand the issues around the Human Rights Act. It’s not ‘campaigners’ who object to Raab’s proposals; it is people who understand what the Act does and why. This time ask the experts and ask them as experts.
And if an asylum applicant who’s been dumped in Rwanda is then refused, what happens then? The whole thing is the stuff of nightmares. It feels like things are becoming increasingly dystopian as the days pass. Why oh why can’t we have some creative and humane people in charge.
So nurses get a pay rise of only £3.50 per week on the same day as the Government agrees to pay £350,000 to get rid of a case brought by a senior civil servant who was bullied out of a job by the Home Secretary? That is 100,000 weeks of a nurses' pay increases.
I fear that the blindingly obvious is too hard to see - we turn away from the truth for our own sanity. But unless this Government is brought down pretty smartish, democracy will be a thing of the past. Massive demonstrations needed - the young need to understand what is at risk
The first Government in the history of the world to give away its legislative powers in vast areas to other countries in exchange for the right to remove its own citizens rights and freedoms. Extraordinary - truly extraordinary.
I have returned from Europe with this piece of paper. It guarantees the freedom of you, your children and grandchildren to live & work in 27 countries will end. In exchange you will get higher prices, lower growth, job losses and reduced global influence. Oh, and a blue passport.
There is a whole tribe - now in or influencing government - who genuinely believe that the welfare state & the NHS are bad. They genuinely do not see why they should pay to help others, that they made it alone & that they deserve to be where they are. Such people exist.
Why do people who suffered the Conservative austerity policies believe that the Conservatives will adopt a Brexit that helps them? I just don’t get it.
Actually we don’t need any more damned investigations - wasting our time & money. We don’t elect and pay a government to mess around and entertain us with endless scandal. The Government needs to step aside and be replaced with a government of national unity pending an election.
I remember suggesting to my father that we go for a walk on a fine May day in 2020. He declined on the basis that with my mother, we would be three. This is how so many people behaved: respectfully.
I am getting angrier and angrier listening to BBC. They are only now waking up to what is going on - only now talking to businesses and even the journalists are finding themselves shocked by what they are hearing.
@BBCWorldatOne
French TV debates involve candidates being asked about the DETAIL of policies. One I saw had specialist journalists on education, healthcare, economics, environment, energy, crime questioning candidates for 15 mins on each policy area. We need to demand more from our politicians.
Really quite shocked by
@ChrisMasonBBC
take on the Mail hit job on
@Keir_Starmer
. Mason must know that having an op plan for campaigning is pretty basic, which will include how people will be fed. Presumably when the BBC arranged a film team, food is planned for them?
The bla bla bla by British lawmakers about failing to impose sanctions is pathetic and shameful. We must now see the full unredacted Russia Report and commence investigations into Peers, MPs & ex-MPs of disclosed & undisclosed receipts of Russian money & gifts.
The President represents a country. When you suggest Macron could be our enemy, you are saying it about France. This is weapons-grade idiocy - and let’s not forget Truss is currently the Foreign Secretary.
These numbers make no sense. This would be around 6% of the 2019/20 tax take. Put another way, it would come close to the entirety of British military spending that year: £42bn. IT DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL.
Every time they say “it was within the rules” or “no rules were broken” or “I complied with all the requirements at the time” you know they know it was wrong.
My God these people have no shame. The EU offered the UK membership of Erasmus, they offered free movement for musicians and performing artists - they offered education and opportunities for our young and our Government turned it all down. Appalling.
So it seems that the UK is leaving
@EUI_EU
. Negotiations have failed. This morning we received an official letter from the UK Government confirming that the current UK-EUI relationship will end as the interim arrangement closes in December 2022. End of an era.
Let's not forget that the Electoral Commission referred its findings regarding Vote Leave's conduct during the referendum to the Met for potential prosecution. The Met closed the case.
All his life this is how people have treated Johnson. But he’s not a child - he’s the Prime Minister. Those backing him have neither self respect nor respect for us whom they are elected to serve. Shameful people. Shameful dishonourable people trashing our country.
Maybe Cummings could use the £35k pay rise he was given whilst in No.10 to pay off part of the £50k of Council Tax he never paid, his new house having been built without planning permission and never declared to the Council.
In truth, there was only one thing Johnson could do at PMQs today and that was resign.
He has broken the law and the Ministerial Code. Apologies are irrelevant.
It's all very well saying it's not the moment for Johnson to go but at a time of extreme international danger, we need to be able to trust our leaders. I for one treat everything that comes from No. 10, those briefed by it or in its thrall as probably untrue or misleading.
The referendum was conducted unlawfully. Serious illegality involved.
This is a matter of fact.
Since when do we have to 'respect' something unlawful? It is contrary to the most fundamental concept underpinning our democracy - the rule of law.
I will never understand this.
Home Office spent £370,000 settling Patel bullying claim by top civil servant. This should be paid for personally by Patel - why should we pay to cover her back?
This is what we’re up against.
The Labour Party, a subset of lawyers, criminal gangs - they're all on the same side, propping up a system of exploitation that profits from getting people to the UK illegally.
I have a plan to stop it.
Here’s how 🧵
Imperial measures are like blue passports; they were allowed when we were in the EU.
They are also pointless, boring, silly and a waste of precious time and energy... But hey, each to their own.
“I love Greece so I had to leave my second home in Devon to come to my third home here because I’m me. And it’s not that important if I risk other people’s lives because they are not me. You understand?”
NEW: Stanley Johnson has spoken to a local TV station outside his Greek villa. He says he hasn't broken any rules and didn't post photos of his journey on Instragam "in a spirit of defiance." He says he's there to make his villa Covid-secure & will return to the UK on July 10th.