The outrageous arrest of Graham Linehan this week seems almost designed to cause maximum embarrassment to the British government. Just a day after the news broke, Nigel Farage was already raising the case at a free-speech Congressional committee in Washington, DC, where the Reform leader happily played prime-minister-in-waiting as he opined gravely about our values
It’s a mark of the absurd legalism of Britain’s political system that after a month of fierce protests and years of government intransigence over asylum hotels, the future of the asylum system now rests on the whims of several judges in a dispute about planning permission. The Home Office and the owners of the Bell
On Wednesday at Liverpool Crown Court, Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, one of the two brothers accused of the Manchester Airport attack last July, was found guilty of assaulting two female police officers, as well as a member of the public. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on a charge that Amaaz and his brother,
Migrant hotel protests are erupting across the country, as ‘tinderbox’ Britain catches fire. What began with a series of protests in Epping, Essex, over the alleged sexual assault of a teenage girl by a recently arrived Ethiopian migrant, has now spread, as Brits air long-standing grievances about asylum seekers they have been forced to host
When it comes to protests against immigration and asylum hotels, accusations of two-tier policing are never far away. This week the spotlight has fallen on Essex Police, and its handling of a demonstration last week by Epping residents against an asylum hotel in the town, following an alleged sexual assault by a recently arrived Ethiopian
‘We are facing a long, hot summer’, warned a report on social cohesion on Tuesday, ‘with a powder keg of tensions left largely unaddressed from last year that could easily ignite once again’. It only took two days for the first sign of this grim prediction coming true. This time, though, the expression of public
It is with some measure of irritation, I must confess, that I am drawn away from this balmy weekend to discuss the idiotic antics of a so-called musical act by the name of ‘Bob Vylan’. At Glastonbury on Saturday, the frontman of the English ‘punk duo’ led the crowd in a chant. First it was just ‘Free, free Palestine’; but then it became ‘Death, death to the IDF’. They also
It’s an ominous time for a state-of-the-nation conference. Each week, the shores we defended against Hitler, Napoleon and the Spanish Armada are breached by hundreds of foreign men, while asylum seekers make up ‘a significant proportion’ of those currently being investigated for the grooming of British children. Earlier this month, there were days of violent anti-immigration riots
Was the prosecution of Lucy Connolly in the public interest? That is the question now being asked of the embattled Attorney General, Richard Hermer, following my story in the Sunday Telegraph that Hermer approved the charge of stirring up racial hatred against the mother and childminder last summer, over a hastily deleted tweet on the night
In 2021, after the barbaric Islamist murder of Sir David Amess MP, the response of Britain’s political class was as baffling as it was shameful: it decided to ramp up censorship of the internet. Somehow, MPs’ vital personal safety came to be equated with the nebulous concept of ‘safety’ online, along with the protection of
A 53-year-old man has been arrested after a car ploughed into a crowd of Liverpool supporters during their Premier League trophy parade last night. Hundreds of thousands were out on the streets to celebrate when the car collided with pedestrians on Water Street, in the heart of Liverpool city centre, shortly after 6 p.m. Twenty-seven were taken
Sir Keir Starmer, remarkably, has launched an immigration crackdown. Britain risks becoming an ‘island of strangers’ after the Tory ‘one-nation experiment in open borders’, he said on Monday. A Home Office white paper has introduced several measures which will supposedly bring the sky-high numbers down. Most interestingly, the government will extend the required qualification period
What really caused the countrywide unrest after the Southport massacre last summer? Last week, a report by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS), shed a much-needed light on this vital question. This was the second part of HMICFRS’s inspection of the police response to the public disorder that followed Axel
The shocking case of Lucy Connolly is becoming a cause célèbre. In October, the Northampton childminder and wife of a Tory councillor received 31 months behind bars for stirring up racial hatred for a tweet on the night of the Southport massacre. Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, now says her sentence was ‘excessive’ and
At yesterday Prime Minister’s Questions, for the second week running, Kemi Badenoch was savaged by Sir Keir Starmer on the key issue of immigration. A fortnight ago, eye-watering ONS figures showed that we have added a city the size of Birmingham to our population, with most of the influx coming from outside Europe. This is
What is the purpose of Private Eye? I know it’s supposed to be some kind of anti-establishment satirical magazine, boldly holding power to account and standing up for the little guy. But I must say I’m finding its response to the extraordinary police doorstepping of Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson rather puzzling. You would think that this supposed thorn in
The shocking police doorstepping of Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson last week has rightly sparked grave concern about the parlous state of freedom of speech in Britain. Sir Keir Starmer has now joined the leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch in arguing that police should be concentrating on the physical crime increasingly blighting our towns rather than things that are
The Tory leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch has long argued against the Labour party and the left’s ‘divisive agenda of identity politics’. Instead, she has sought to portray the Conservatives as a truly ‘colour-blind party’ and a ‘genuine meritocracy’. Speaking to the Times earlier this year, she even argued that we should not make a ‘big deal’ of
Postman Tadeusz Potoczek had completed his deliveries for the day. At around 3 p.m. on 3 February, the 60-year-old was returning from work via the London underground, still wearing his red postman’s coat. As the southbound Victoria line train rumbled towards Oxford Circus, he headed for the far end of the platform, perhaps in the
Popping champagne, skulking off to smoke a spliff and pledging to become a life-long Labour voter. Anyone concerned about criminal justice in Britain will find the well-documented glee of the 1,700 prisoners given early release around the country this week galling indeed. As domestic abusers and career criminals walk free, many will have been struck by the contrast with
