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The truth about Andy Burnham’s record must be exposed before it’s too late

The King of the North’s reputation as Manchester’s saviour is undeserved. He offers no solutions to any of Britain’s biggest problems Daily Telegraph 20/05/26 There are great political leaders, men of integrity and principle, and then there is Andy Burnham, that most over-hyped of Labour apparatchiks. There is no substance behind the fake bonhomie and easy charm, just more mediocrity, and yet his King of the North act appears to be taking in millions. One poll suggests he would propel Labour into the lead were he to become leader, a catastrophic development. Yet his achievements as mayor of Greater Manchester range from the grossly exaggerated to the non-existent. He has presided over a series of disasters, including wasting £100m on a Ulez-style assault on motorists and his police force being placed in special measures. His class-war-infused analysis of Britain’s problems is ahistoric and economically illiterate; his cod municipal socialism would kill off what is left of our pros...

Burnham U-turns again and drops support for new migrant benefits

Labour leadership frontrunner makes fifth policy reversal since becoming by-election candidate Daily Telegraph 28/05/26 Andy Burnham has dropped his support for migrants being given immediate access to benefits in the UK, in his latest about-turn on policy. Mr Burnham repeatedly voiced his opposition to the no recourse to public funds (NRPF) policy that bars migrants from the benefits system until they obtain permanent residence. But The Times reported that Mr Burnham’s team stated he no longer stood by the policy. NRPF has been UK policy since 1999, and means that migrants on work, study or family visas cannot access public funds such as housing support, Universal Credit or disability benefit. Only when a foreign citizen has been granted indefinite leave to remain (ILR), allowing them to live, study and work in the UK permanently, is the ban on benefits lifted. The Mayor of Greater Manchester still features a call on his website from 2019 calling on Boris Johnson, then prime ...

Welcome to socialist Britain, where rewards are no longer a reflection of effort

Labour has left the nation sleepwalking into a welfare state that punishes work Daily Telegraph 24/05/26 How far have we travelled down the British road to socialism? We now live in a country where a family living on benefits in London can be better off than a household earning £70,000 per year, according to analysis by the Centre for Social Justice. For much of Britain, the link between how much you work and what you can afford has been broken. If Labour has a core ideological belief, it is that fighting inequality is a moral crusade that trumps everything else. Economic growth must play second fiddle to this sacred cause. Conservative politicians of recent decades have been too frightened to challenge this mantra, for fear of being seen as heartless. There was, of course, the Thatcherite interregnum in the 1980s, when wealth creation was openly celebrated, and rising inequality was seen as a price worth paying for the country becoming richer. But that was an aberration from ...

The downfall of Scotland’s political power couple

Behind the SNP’s years of electoral dominance lay a tightly controlled partnership brought down by scandal and infighting Daily Telegraph 25/05/26 Early in the morning of April 5, 2023, dozens of officers descended on the suburban home shared by Nicola Sturgeon and her husband, Peter Murrell. They set up an evidence tent on the driveway while large blue sheets were used to shield the view of the garage and back garden. In astonishing scenes beamed on to television screens across Britain, police searched the house, using the tent and sheets to shield the items they removed from the watching cameras. Ms Sturgeon, who had been Scotland’s first minister only two months before, later said her house looked “like a murder scene”. Her husband, who had been the SNP’s chief executive for more than two decades, was arrested as part of the police investigation into embezzlement. He admitted to embezzling £400,000 from the party over 12 years at Edinburgh’s High Court on Monday. It is an ex...

The war on wealth has only just begun

Allister Heath - Sunday Telegraph The prospect of a new Labour leader should fill us all with dread. Amid the uncertainty surrounding Sir Keir Starmer’s replacement, there is one inevitability: taxes will increase, regardless of who’s in charge. If you are already sick of the crippling taxes levied on anything that moves (and much that doesn’t) in today’s Britain, I have grim news. The war on wealth has only just begun. There is very little hope of any improvement, at least under this Labour Government. The state of play is even bleaker than it was during the 1970s, when a class-war obsessed Labour Party dedicated itself to taxing the rich until the pips squeaked (as the then socialist Chancellor Denis Healey didn’t quite put it), levied confiscatory rates on high incomes, targeted “speculators” and sent the country into the arms of the IMF as a result. This time around, it’s not just the very wealthy that are in Labour’s sights, but almost anybody with assets or who wants to i...

Small boat migrants charged with child sex offences

Seven Afghan nationals, alleged to be part of grooming gang, accused of 40 offences in total Daily Telegraph 22/05/26 Seven Afghan nationals who came to Britain via small boats and lorries have been charged with rape and child sex abuse offences. The refugees, allegedly part of a grooming gang, are accused of sexual offences committed between August 2023 and May last year, according to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). They have been charged with a total 40 offences altogether as part of an investigation into group-based child sexual exploitation in Norwich. Police arrested seven men during raids on seven different addresses, six in Norwich and one in Dumbarton, Scotland. The men appeared before Norwich magistrates’ vourt on Friday. A courts service officer said that all seven were remanded into custody until a plea hearing at Norwich Crown Court on June 19. Jamil Khalil, 20, Ahmadin Ahmadzai, 21, Qais Kaker, 20, Fazal Auryakhel, 20, Mohammed Farooq Sinwary, 23, Ali Ahamad...