Chris Whiteside's Blog

From the Times Diary today - how the Labour whips displayed epic levels of incompetence last night and had to employ Football-League style time-wasting (for which they earned a severe telling-off from Mr Speaker.)

I quoted a tweet from Nick Cohen this morning about the proposed Labour curb on Jury Trials He's also written a great piece on Substack about the issue. He advertised it on X with the words "The radical right rages that progressive elites want to take power from voters and give it to their chums. Labour’s dismal achievement is to prove that the radical right is absolutely correct." Here are some extracts from the Substack piece "If you want to understand why “progressives” arouse such disdain, look at how Keir Starmer’s Labour party is threatening trial by jury. It’s an object lesson in how bureaucratic politicians play into the hands of the radical right while spurning the working-class voters their predecessors once represented Starmer and so many of his contemporaries are closer to HR managers than politicians. They think it is enough to mouth vaguely inclusive, vaguely leftish platitudes. And then when it really matters, when the time for decision comes, they den...

If you have five minutes to spend on thoughts about political mattes today, you could not use it beter than to listen to this speech from former attorney-general Geoffrey Cox, KC, MP, about why "Juries are precious."

"Just catching up on the Mandelson docs. The key issue for me is this. On 10 September, 2025 Starmer told the House “full due process was followed during this appointment, as it is with all ambassadors”. The Powell note shows beyond doubt that was a lie." ( Dan Hodges on X)

 

"Watching the Labour front bench's attempt to restrict trial by jury makes me wonder whether Keir Starmer and David Lammy understand England at all. They are smashing up the fundamental freedoms of this country as if they were foreign invaders." ( Nick Cohen on X referring to yesterday's parliamentary vote on Jury Trials.)

Today the Conservatives forced a vote on Labour plans to restrict access to trial by Jury. Conservatives voted to keep trial by jury. The Labour government bill to do restrict jury trials got through to the next stage but the fight goes on. The Courts and Tribunals Bill passed by 304 votes to 203, a majority of 101, with 10 Labour MPs rebelling against the government. The 10 Labour MPs who voted against the bill were Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain, Kim Johnson, Ian Lavery, John McDonnell, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Jon Trickett and Nadia Whittome. There were 90 Labour MPs listed as no vote recorded, which can mean abstention. Labour MP Karl Turner, seen by some as a leading opponent of the plans to restrict jury trials, said the bill was "unworkable, unpopular, unjust and unnecessary". Turner, a former barrister, said he would abstain in the vote after speaking to Lammy on Monday, when he was promised a "meaningful" review period to scrutinise how th...

‘The Green Party leader only wants to make two things bigger, and neither of them is our army’. Kemi Badenoch

"Economic policies need to be analyzed in terms of the incentives they create, rather than the hopes that inspired them." Thomas Sowell

 

"I just don’t understand how anyone can think the UK can adopt a moral, strategic or diplomatic position that says “We’ll let our allies fly missions from UK soil to risk their servicemen and women’s lives to defend British citizens. But we will refuse to do it ourselves”. ( Dan Hodges , former Labour and trade union staffer who is now a journalist, on X)

Congratulations to councillor Lee Allen, elected this week in the Hextable ward on Sevenoaks district council, gaining a ward previously held by an Independent councillor with a 19 percentage point increase in the Conservative vote share. Very interestingly this was also on a twenty percentage point increase in turnout, previously 27% this time up to 47.5% which is very good indeed for a council by-election.

"No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces." (Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke , cited with various slightly different translations into English and often shortened to "no plan survives contact with the enemy")

  I have not been able to verify this quote widely attributed to Aristotle, as there is no evidence that he ever wrote or said these precise words and they cannot be found in his surviving works. It is likely a modern paraphrase, or a sentiment loosely inspired by his teachings on politics and ethics.   Context: The quote is often linked to discussions on Aristotle's Politics and Nicomachean Ethics, where he argues that the goal of war should be peace, and that building a stable, virtuous society is the true aim of statesmanship. Origin: The quote has been traced back to a 1943 New York Times Book Review.  In Politics, Aristotle does argue that cities should be prepared for war, but that many nations fall because they do not know how to live in peace. So the sentiment does fit Aristotle's philosophy even though there is no evidence that he used this exact phrase,

There is an anecdote - which I have not been able to verify - that when the playwright George Bernard Shaw was making a speech, he was interrupted by a sudden and enthusiastic "loud peal of applause." Startled by the audience's reaction to what he considered a straightforward point, Shaw turned to the chairman and jokingly asked, " Did I say something stupid? " I've had a George Bernard Shaw moment today when I looked at the traffic stats for this blog. Normally it gets between a few hundred and a few thousand pageviews per day. Yesterday, for instance, it got six thousand. Tiny by comparison with a major website, but more than enough to make it worth the effort or writing it. Today so far this blog has had nearly 49,000 hits. It would, perhaps be inviting an insulting response to quote Shaw precisely but - Have I said something interesting? 

Twenty-six years ago I sang this to my wife at our wedding reception. Probably not quite as well as Bryn Terfel sings it in this recording. But it brings back wonderful memories.

Alastair Campbell - yes, the one who was Tony Blair's director of communications at the time of the invasion of Iraq, who took part in the preparation and release of the infamous author "dodgy dossier" justifying that invasion, one of the people who told us that the regime in Iraq could deploy Weapons of Mass Destruction inside 45 minutes, accused Donald Trump yesterday of  lying about Iranian progress towards getting nuclear weapons. Quite frankly, if either Donald Trump or Alastair Campbell said it was raining I would look outside and check before picking up my umbrella, but for Campbell to accuse someone of lying about what weapons a Middle Eastern country has to justify attacking them ... It has to be the biggest " Pot calling the kettle black " moment, not just of the year, not just of the decade, but of the century.

This was one of the questions that opposition leader Kemi Badenoch asked yesterday that seems to have every remaining Labour supporter from the Prime Minister downwards making personal attacks on her for supposedly making personal attacks. In my view this was a very pertinent question. Sadly it didn't get a clear answer, just the usual ad hominem response.

Madeline Grant has a piece in the Spectator about Prime Minister's Questions yesterday. You can read the whole thing at: Why is Keir Starmer pretending he’s a serious statesman? Here are a few extracts: "The situation in the Middle East inevitably preoccupied questions. Why, asked Mrs Badenoch, were the US allowed to defend British interests and personnel, but the RAF were not. The Prime Minister loves these moments. Never mind the fact that our denuded and depressed armed forces are now having to rely on – of all people – France to defend the sovereign territory which we cannot or will not in Cyprus, Sir Keir had his piece of paper in his hand, and he really believed that we are set for ‘following the due processes of international law in our time’.  He began by praising his own ‘clarity, purpose and… cool head’, which is quite something given that he goes the colour of a constipated flamingo every time a woman asks him a question he doesn’t like." "He would be guid...

 

"Any policy is a success by sufficiently low standards and a failure by sufficiently high standards." Thomas Sowell